Iron Chariots Wiki - User contributions [en]

Sharia

2011-07-12T00:47:41Z

Eyedunno: Cleaned up spelling, grammar, etc.

[[Muslim]]s believe Sharia law to be the perfect law as dictated by God. They believe that Muslims shall reside under Sharia in jannat ([[heaven]]). Sharia law is derived from the [[Qur'an]] and from [[Muhammad]]'s sayings in the [[Hadith]]s, [[Sunnah]]s, and [[Sirat]]. There are some disagreements about certain minor aspects of Sharia within the Muslim community.

Sharia law controls almost every aspect of [[Muslim]]s lives. It also regulates [[dhimmi]]s (nonbelievers who live in Islamic states). Sharia does not allow freedom of speech in such matters as criticism of [[Muhammad]], the [[Qur'an]], and [[Islam]] on the whole. Such criticism is blasphemy and is punishable by death. Sharia law also punishes [[apostasy]] with death.

Argument from the meaning of life

2011-07-11T20:12:57Z

Eyedunno: punctuation, etc.

==Argument From the Meaning of Life==

The '''argument from the meaning of life''' is a type of [[appeal to emotion]]. In this case, the arguer typically feels as though life hasn't come about by chance and is therefore special and designed with a purpose in mind. The arguer might say "if there was no god, then life would be pointless." They might even propose that the only way life can have meaning is if God exists.

No one wants to admit that their life is void of meaning and purpose. The arguer uses this by suggesting that to believe life has meaning, you must also believe that God exists.

==Problems With This Argument==

*Those that use this argument assume that life without a god has no meaning. In fact, a person can still have a fulfilling and memorable life even if that life is finite.

*It is important to determine what the theist believes the meaning of life actually is. In some cases, they say the meaning of life is to worship God. Subservient worship is not going to be most people's idea of a meaningful life.

*It is also important to determine if there even is a meaning to life.

*Even still, there is the question of "so what?" Just because we might feel uncomfortable admitting that our life does not serve an eternal purpose, it does not mean that a god necessarily exists. At most, this argument becomes a variation on [[Pascal's Wager]]. The arguer is suggesting that we should believe in a god, even if it does not exist, so that we can feel the self esteem boost of our lives having a higher meaning.

*This argument fails when we bring predestination and free will into the picture. Firstly, if meaning is predestined, then either God is unjust and does not give atheists the same facility to meaning, or is impotent, and can't. Secondly, free will and "designed" meaning cannot exist together, as they are mutually exclusive.

It seems as if the majority of this argument is based on a objective definition of the word meaning, while in reality a meaning of life is not objective but subjective.
{{Arguments for god}}

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]]
[[Category:Arguments from design]]

Deepity

2011-07-10T17:01:49Z

Eyedunno:

'''Deepity''' is a term coined by philosopher [[Daniel Dennett]], to describe a proposition that can be read as being either true and trivial, or untrue but would be amazing if it were true.

== Definition ==
In his talk, ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_9w8JougLQ#t=30m15s The Evolution of Confusion]'', given at the AAI 2009 conference, Dennett described a deepity as follows:
{{Quote|'''Deepities'''

A ''deepity'' is a proposition that seems to be profound because it is actually logically ill-formed.

It has (at least) two readings and balances precariously between them.

On one reading it is true but trivial.

And on another reading it is false but would be earth-shattering if true.}}

He gives the sentence "Love is just a word" as an example of a deepity. On one reading, the word "love" is merely a word, just like "cow" or "cheeseburger", but this is trivial and uninteresting. On the other reading, love itself (not the word, but the emotion) is not a word.

[[Category:Philosophy]]

You just want to sin

2011-07-09T19:49:02Z

Eyedunno: more capitalization

This argument is made against [[atheist]]s as an attempt to point out their (potential) fear of living the religious lifestyles, and is related to the accusation that [[atheists are just in denial]].

The best ways to counter it are the following:

1. Ignore it; it's not really an argument to begin with

2. Agree to it with sarcasm; once again it's not an argument, or at least not a good one.

[[Theist]]s sin all the time; their belief system is based on faith alone, or at least some of them believe that. Some of them claim that without religion there are no morals, even though there have been countless immoral acts done at the hands of religion. The [[Protestant]] [[Christian]] religion doesn't have regulations about being moral - to them you just have to pray your sins away, so in a sense, with religion there are still immoral things.

The Holocaust, Jihad, the Crusades, and the time of reform in Europe during and after the Middle Ages are fine examples of what harm religion can lead to.

[[Category:Criticisms of atheism]]
[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]]
[[Category:Arguments for belief]]

You just want to sin

2011-07-09T19:47:53Z

Eyedunno: punctuation, capitalization, clarity, etc.

This argument is made against [[Atheist]]s as an attempt to point out their (potential) fear of living the religious lifestyles, and is related to the accusation that [[Atheists are just in denial]].

The best ways to counter it are the following:

1. Ignore it; it's not really an argument to begin with

2. Agree to it with sarcasm; once again it's not an argument, or at least not a good one.

[[Theist]]s sin all the time; their belief system is based on faith alone, or at least some of them believe that. Some of them claim that without religion there are no morals, even though there have been countless immoral acts done at the hands of religion. The [[Protestant]] [[Christian]] religion doesn't have regulations about being moral - to them you just have to pray your sins away, so in a sense, with religion there are still immoral things.

The Holocaust, Jihad, the Crusades, and the time of reform in Europe during and after the Middle Ages are fine examples of what harm religion can lead to.

[[Category:Criticisms of atheism]]
[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]]
[[Category:Arguments for belief]]

Panda Trial

2011-07-09T19:42:06Z

Eyedunno: punctuation, etc.

{{stub}}
{{wikipedia|Dover Panda Trial}}

==Dover Panda Trial==

The "Dover Panda Trial" is the term that has come to be popularly used (à la "Scopes Monkey Trial") when referring to the 2005 ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'' [[Intelligent Design]] case.

==The Trial==
===Background===

On October 18, 2004, the Dover Board of Education voted 6-3 to compel science teachers to inform students that [[evolution]] was "just a theory" and that resources containing alternate views on the development of life (including [[Intelligent Design]]) were available in the school library. The three board members who voted against the measure resigned in protest. Science teachers refused to comply, citing the Pennsylvania Code of Education which restricts teachers from teaching information they believe to be false. School administrators eventually fulfilled the School Board's requirement by reading the following statement:

<blockquote>The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about [[Darwin]]'s theory of evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.

Because Darwin's Theory is a theory, it is still being tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.

Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People is available for students to see if they would like to explore this view in an effort to gain an understanding of what intelligent design actually involves.

As is true with any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the origins of life to individual students and their families. As a standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on standards-based assessments.</blockquote>

The school board claimed that it did not teach Intelligent Design, it only made students aware of it as an alternative to the theory of Evolution, which the board members believed to be flawed. The board further stated that Intelligent Design was not "religion in disguise." Despite its insistence that its decision was not religiously motivated, the board was represented in court by the [[Thomas More Law Center]], a not-for-profit Christian law center that is the self proclaimed "...sword and shield of people of faith."

==Transcripts==
Transcripts of the court proceedings may be found on the James Randi Educational Foundation website.

[http://forums.randi.org/index.php?pageid=dover JREF]

[[Category:Creationism]]

Golden Rule

2011-07-09T14:09:04Z

Eyedunno: punctuation

{{philosophy-stub}}
{{wikipedia|Ethic of reciprocity|color=#F0FFD5;}}

The '''Golden Rule''' is often stated, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," or more simply, "Treat others as you would like to be treated." Also known as the '''ethic of reciprocity''', the same concept has been the basis of social [[morality]] in many cultures throughout history. Although the Golden Rule is often attributed to [[Jesus]], many forms of the ethical principle long predate him. Jesus himself, in {{Bible|Matthew 7:12}}, describes it as the "sum of the law and the Prophets."

==Golden Rules in the Bible==

Several passages in the Bible can be interpreted as being different forms of the "true" Golden Rule:

* {{Bible|Leviticus 19:18}}
{{Bible-verse|18|Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD.}}

* {{Bible|Matthew 7:12}}
{{Bible-verse|12|Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.}}

* {{Bible|Luke 6:31}}
{{Bible-verse|31|And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.}}

* {{Bible|Romans 13:9}}
{{Bible-verse|9|For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.}}

==Non-Golden Rules==
Sometimes the Golden Rule is misinterpreted as, "Do unto others as they would do unto you," or, in an even more problematic formulation, "Do unto others as they have done unto you." Both versions tend to encourage a kind of "tit-for-tat" ethics. The latter version in particular suggests retaliation and [[revenge]], not unlike the "[[eye for an eye]]" style of "justice" promulgated in several places in the [[Old Testament]]:

* {{Bible|Exodus 21:23-25}}
{{Bible-verse|23|And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,}}
{{Bible-verse|24|Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,}}
{{Bible-verse|25|Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.}}

* {{Bible|Leviticus 24:17-22}}
{{Bible-verse|17|And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death.}}
{{Bible-verse|18|And he that killeth a beast shall make it good; beast for beast.}}
{{Bible-verse|19|And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him;}}
{{Bible-verse|20|Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth: as he hath caused a blemish in a man, so shall it be done to him again.}}
{{Bible-verse|21|And he that killeth a beast, he shall restore it: and he that killeth a man, he shall be put to death.}}
{{Bible-verse|22|Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the LORD your God.}}

*{{Bible|Deuteronomy 19:19-21}}
{{Bible-verse|19|Then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother: so shalt thou put the evil away from among you.}}
{{Bible-verse|20|And those which remain shall hear, and fear, and shall henceforth commit no more any such evil among you.}}
{{Bible-verse|21|And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.}}

==Criticism==
Some apologists make the argument:
* "If I didn't know Jesus, I would want someone to teach me about him so I could be saved. Therefore, I should witness to non-Christians wherever I discover them."
With this argument, minor but significant flaws of the Golden Rule become apparent. Where people's needs differ significantly, a strict interpretation of the Golden Rule can tend to strain relationships rather than smooth them.

An alternative (sometimes known as the Platinum Rule) can be stated:
* Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.
Treat people how they actually want to be treated, rather than how you assume they would want to be treated. The needs of others are considered more important than the individual's assumption on how the other should be treated. With this alternative, one cannot instill his own values on another without the other's consent.

==External link==
*[http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm Versions of the Golden Rule in 21 world religions]

{{Philosophy}}

[[Category:Philosophy]]

1st commandment

2011-07-09T13:41:44Z

Eyedunno: The First Amendment doesn't apply only to Americans.

{{Ten Commandments}}
{{Bible|Exodus 20:1-3}}:
{{Bible-verse|1|And God spake all these words, saying,}} {{Bible-verse|2|I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.}} {{Bible-verse|3|Thou shalt have no other gods before me.}}

{{Bible|Deuteronomy 5:6-7}}:
{{Bible-verse|6|I am the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.}} {{Bible-verse|7|Thou shalt have none other gods before me.}}

{{Bible|Exodus 34:12-13}}:
{{Bible-verse|12|Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee:}} {{Bible-verse|13|But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:}}

==Counter-Apologetics==
* What other gods? We are constantly told that there is one god and this god is clearly telling us to not accept any other gods, at least not before him. “I am your Lord thy God, thou shall not have any other Gods before me.” Notice it says ‘before me’ does that imply that other gods do indeed exist? What about any gods after him? This was spoken by Elohim (ironically, a plural name for the god El), who is the “Lord” of the Israelites.
** The commandment may be referring to man-made idols such as the golden calf made by the Israelites in Exodus 32:4 (ironically it was because of the absence of Moses who was on Mount Sinai allegedly receiving the Ten Commandments that the Israelites made the idol in the first place). It may also be referring to the gods of other cultures, such as Baal.
* In Exodus, God also ''hardened the heart'' of the pharaoh on several occasions prolonging their 'house of bondage' and having them chased unnecessarily.

==In United States law==
*The 1st commandment is not a part of U.S. law or customs. The [[First Amendment]] to the U.S. Constitution specifically states that any such requirement cannot be made into law. In the U.S., people are free to worship any god or no god.

[[Category:Commandments]]

Crocoduck

2011-07-09T13:33:36Z

Eyedunno:

[[Image:Crocoduck.jpg|thumb|Crocoduck]]
The '''Crocoduck''' fallacy is one made by [[apologist]] [[Kirk Cameron]] and refuted immediately. It is an example of a [[straw man]] fallacy. Even though it was refuted, Cameron was found to continually use it, mostly with his partner [[Ray Comfort]] (the [[Banana argument|banana]] man).

The argument states that for [[evolution]] to be proved right, all sets of [[transitional fossil]]s would need to be completed and, according to Kirk, creatures such as the "Crocoduck" (a duck with a crocodile head) would need to be discovered.

==Counter-apologetics==
This fallacy doesn't need much explaining: the theory of evolution does not state that a crocodile has to become a duck, or vice-versa, or that such a thing must have happened for evolution to be correct. Even if a duck were supposed to have evolved directly into a crocodile, nothing says that a duck would have a crocodile head aside from the Photoshopped picture at right.

The Crocoduck fallacy demonstrates the complete lack of understanding of Comfort and Cameron regarding biological evolution. They apparently believe that [[Darwin]]ian evolution requires a direct, single-step ancestor between every two species on the planet. In other words, there must have been not only a crocoduck, but also a croco-beaver and a beaver-duck predating the crocodile, beaver, and duck.

Habitable zone

2011-07-09T13:12:56Z

Eyedunno: punctuation

In astronomy, a '''habitable zone''' is a region in space around a star that allows for liquid water on the surface, which establishes favorable conditions either for the emergence of native life via [[abiogenesis]] or for transplanted terrestrial life to live in. These zones are usually a region of space described between two circles or spheres in which a planet, asteroid belt, or space station may orbit through. The margin of space between these two circles or spheres may vary in thickness and distance from the host star depending on the size, type, and age of the star, as well as the size and type of planet. This is also commonly known as the "Goldilocks zone" because it has conditions which are "just right" for life.

==Arguments==

A less sophisticated version of the [[fine tuning argument]] or [[anthropic principle]] is as follows
:''If the Earth were just a few miles further away from the sun, it would be too cold for life to exist, and if the earth were just a few miles closer to the sun, it would be too hot for life to exist. Surely you can see the intelligent design in that!''

==Counter-arguments==

{{quote-source2|. . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, `This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'|[[Douglas Adams]] (as quoted by [[Richard Dawkins]])}}

The fallacy is applying life as-we-know-it to a theoretical world with significantly different environmental characteristics. Life on earth is well adapted to the conditions on Earth. If those conditions had differed, even slightly, life as-we-know-it would not be possible. The key phrase is "as-we-know-it". Compare Antarctica to the Sahara. These are some of the most extreme environments on earth, and yet we discover life forms in both of them. Bacteria and microorganisms thrive in even more diverse environments - in sulfur ponds and surrounding volcanic vents, for example.

[[Category:Science]]

Argument from scripture

2011-07-09T13:10:04Z

Eyedunno: grammar, etc.

The [[argument from scripture]] is the argument that something is true because it is written in scripture, for example, that God exists because the Bible says God exists. It assumes that the scripture and its interpretation are reliable.

This argument is often justified with a related (and circular) argument, that the scripture is to be believed because God inspired it.

A similar argument can be made for passages in other holy books.

==Counterarguments==
* "Trying to prove God exists with the Bible is like trying to prove Superman exists with a comic book." - Robgene

In order for this argument to be [[soundness|sound]], one must demonstrate that the scripture is reliable. That is, one must show that if the Bible says something, then that statement is likely to be true.

* The Bible has been shown to be scientifically wrong. Geological evidence shows no trace of [[Noah's ark|Noah's flood]], and that the human race (to say nothing of the earth) is far older than the 6,000-10,000 years predicted by adding up the ages of people in Biblical genealogies. Astronomical evidence shows that the sun does not revolve around the Earth, and that the Earth is not flat or that it ever has been flat which is contradictory to scripture.
* The Bible has been shown to be historically wrong. Exodus finds no historical backing. There's no archeological evidence that Jews were enslaved in Egypt or millions of people wandered the desert. There's no historical evidence of a large empire of David and Solomon. The nation of Israel appears to have begin as a more political movement out of the general Canaanite populations.
* The Bible contains contradictions between the four gospels (and other Bible books) that cast doubt on biblical reliability.
* The Bible contains forgeries. Many of the letters of "Paul" are [[pseudepigrapha]] (fake writing) and clearly not written by Paul. This includes the following line in 2 Timothy which says all of scripture is true, and which is generally recognized as a forgery:
**''2 Timothy 3:16 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.''

* The Bible contains [[prophecy|failed prophecies]]: "2,000 years of 'any day now.'"

==Archeological confirmation==
[[Apologist]]s sometimes claim that archeological research has confirmed many of the Bible's claims, including the existence of cities and kings mentioned in the Bible. For instance, tablets discovered in Ebla, in Syria, allegedly contain references to cities mentioned in [[Genesis]], including Sodom and Gomorrah.

Such discoveries do confirm parts of the Bible. However, we must be careful not to commit what might be called the Spider-Man fallacy. Suppose that a few thousand years from now, an archeologist discovers a cache of Spider-Man comic books. Judging by the backgrounds, the stories are clearly set in New York. New York is a real place, as confirmed by archeology. However, this does not mean that Spider-Man exists.

Similarly, the fact that Bible stories are set in real places does not mean that the stories themselves are real. The Red Sea is a real sea, but that does not mean that [[Moses]] parted it.

Secondly, there is reason to believe that many of the stories in the Bible are not true. For instance, there is no archeological evidence that Hebrews were ever enslaved in Egypt in significant numbers, as recounted in the book of [[Exodus]]. The Bible's track record as a historical book is certainly imperfect, and therefore its claims must be considered skeptically, one at a time.

==Scriptural Reliability==
A second apologist argument is that the scriptures are honest depictions of the originals: that the Bible was copied very meticulously and so we can be confident that what we have are not substantively different than the originals. Some apologists argue that the Dead Sea Scrolls confirm that the Biblical manuscripts vary very little. Others include stories of multiple independent translations which differed by only a few words. They generally argue that:

* The texts we have today are very similar to the originals.
* They were not changed much by editing or translation.
** Therefore we can accept what they say as true.

The problems with this argument are many:
* The texts do vary greatly. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a prime example of how vastly different versions were.
* The translation and editing changed the works greatly over the years and religious texts are rife with theological disagreement, editing, and editing of editing.
* The conclusion and argument itself is entirely a [[red herring]]: '''Even a perfect copy of a work of fiction is still a work of fiction.'''

==External links==
* ''[http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a008.html In what ways have the discoveries of archaeology verified the reliability of the Bible?]'' at christiananswers.net

[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God|Scripture, argument from]]

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-09T07:03:46Z

Eyedunno: removed a redundancy

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] and other [[Biblical literalism|Biblical literalists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known outside of the Ancient Near East, supposedly lending credibility to a literal interpretation of such stories as the [[Noah's ark|worldwide flood of Noah]] and the confusion of man's languages at Babel.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in ''The Discovery of Genesis'' (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” ''[禁]'' is composed of the symbol for “two trees” ''[林]'' and “command” ''[示]'' and the symbol for “desire” ''[婪]'' consists of symbols for “two trees” ''[林]'' and “woman” ''[女]''.}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% of those in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by literalists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the case of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation. Ultimately, Chinese characters comprise a kind of syllabary (specifically a morphosyllabic writing system, in the terminology of DeFrancis), and treating the Chinese writing system as somehow directly encoding meanings without recourse to pronunciation is a trap that people unfamiliar with Chinese (and occasionally even native speakers) are frequently prone to fall into, but it should generally be avoided. In the words of linguist Arika Okrent (2009):
{{Quote|Chinese writing doesn't represent spoken language in the same way that alphabetic writing does, but it still represents spoken language - just in a much more complicated way.}}
And, in a more humorous take on the treatment of Chinese as particularly unique, [http://www.cracked.com/article_18821_5-examples-americans-thinking-foreign-people-are-magic_p2.html Cracked.com columnist Christina H.] offers the following:
{{Quote|For years, motivational speakers and the like have been touting how the Chinese word for "crisis" is made of "danger" and "opportunity," which (1) [http://pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html is bullshit] and (2) is a little insulting as it implies Chinese words were created to teach lessons, unlike any other culture where words are created because you need to say that thing.}}
{{Quote|What would you think if you saw a Chinese motivational speaker teaching his audience that female family members cannot be relied upon to keep their heads in a crisis because the English word for crisis is made of "cry" and "sis"? You laugh, but considering there's 1.3 billion Chinese, someone's probably doing it.}}

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Biblical literalist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that literalists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 'earth' (but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 'mouth' (but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which these literalists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on its modern usage as a shorthand version (used mainly in Japanese and, with slight modification, in Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵 'iron'. Biblical literalist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and there is also a false cultural assumption about a relationship between the word for 'tongue' and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===References===
* DeFrancis, John. ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.
* Okrent, Arika. ''In the Land of Invented Languages''. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2009.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Bible]]
[[Category:Creationism]]

Peer review

2011-07-09T06:45:47Z

Eyedunno: grammar

{{stub}}

'''Peer review''' is a general process whereby an article, before being accepted for publication in a scientific journal, is reviewed by several scientists (peers) knowledgeable in the field to which the article pertains. It is considered a cornerstone of [[Scientific method|modern scientific research]].

==Overview==
When a scientist submits a paper to a scientific journal for publication, the editor of the journal selects several reviewers and sends them the paper to review. The reviewers send the editor their comments and questions about the paper. The editor then decides whether to reject the paper, publish it as-is, or send it back to the author with a list of problems to correct before the paper can be accepted.

In many cases, and especially with reputable journals, the editor removes the name of the author before sending the article out to the reviewers. The purpose is to help ensure that the reviewers judge the paper on its own merits, and not on the reputation of its author.

A number of issues are addressed when a paper is reviewed:
* The claim being made, and its merit
* The proposed experiments and methodology for data gathering
* Whether stages of the paper contain bias or assumptions that skew the results
* Whether the quality and quantity of [[Evidence|evidence]] meets the [[Burden of proof|burden of proof]]
* Whether the analysis and conclusions [[Logic|logically]] follow from the data

A violation of any one of these areas can invalidate the whole paper, and the author will have to fix the problems.

==Strengths of Peer Review==
* Peer review helps ensure that grossly inaccurate or poorly-reasoned papers are not published in research journals. Thus, the reader of a peer-reviewed journal is assured that the articles are at least good enough to be considered worthy of publication by several experts in the field.

* Contrariwise, if an article has not been peer-reviewed, this can arouse suspicion: if the paper is any good, why hasn't it been peer-reviewed?

==Weaknesses of Peer Review==
* Since an article must be read, understood, and reviewed by the reviewers (who are usually working scientists, and thus have full-time jobs already), peer review can delay publication of a paper by months or even years, especially if the editor sends it back for correction. This can delay advances by others in the field.

* Peer review is only as good as the reviewers. These may be unfamiliar with the subject treated in the paper (e.g., if a paper on the social impact of economic policies is submitted to a social science journal, the reviewers may not recognize errors in the parts of the paper that talk about economics).

* Scientists are only human, and a paper that strays too far from the conventional wisdom in a field may be dismissed by experts, especially if the evidence supporting the article's ideas is weak.

* Some [[Creationism|creationists]] and [[Intelligent design|intelligent design]] proponents have decided to start their own peer-review journals, such as the [http://www.iscid.org/pcid.php Progress in Complexity, Information, and Design (PCID)], run by [[William Dembski|William A. Dembski]]. Such journals are meant to overcome the common complaint that creationist or intelligent design claims aren't peer reviewed. Such journals are not impartial and are biased, so despite that papers "pass" the peer review within these journals, the process has effectively failed. If the point is to ensure the paper has accurately applied the scientific method, and all the reviewers at the journal habitually bypass the scientific method when it's inconvenient, the journal cannot achieve the goal. The journal itself must have a history of accuracy and impartiality.

==External Links==

*[http://www.iscid.org/ The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)]

Argumentum ad odium

2011-07-09T04:37:24Z

Eyedunno:

The appeal to spite (Argumentum ad odium, appeal to hatred) is a [[fallacy]] in which someone attempts to win favor for an argument by exploiting existing feelings of spite, or schadenfreude (pleasure derived from misfortune of others) in the opposing party. Basically it is an attempt to associate the opposition with a distasteful ideology.

The argument is often mistaken for an [[ad hominem]], which openly attacks the opposition, as well as appealing to negative emotion, whilst the appeal to hatred/spite only appeals to a negative emotion and assumes hatred for the opposition exists. Attacking the opposition directly is unnecessary.

'''Examples'''

1. "If you vote for this tax cut, it will mean that the fat cats will get even more money to spend on their expensive luxury yachts, while you and I keep struggling to pay the bills."

2. "Stop recycling! Aren't you tired of Hollywood celebrities preaching to everyone about saving the Earth?"

Scientology

2011-07-09T04:36:12Z

Eyedunno: A few small corrections to spelling, etc.

The '''Church of Scientology''' is a [[cult]]/[[religion]] created by science fiction author [[L. Ron Hubbard]] in the 1950s. The Church is extremely wealthy and draws attention from the fact that several prominent celebrities are members. The Church is avidly opposed to the fields of psychiatry and psychology. It is notorious for using legal threats and action to intimidate and silence its opponents, especially those who try to convince Scientologists to leave the organization, those who attempt to demonstrate the cult-like nature of the organization, and those who expose Scientology secrets that are supposed to be reserved for senior-level Scientologists. Scientologists are encouraged to [[shun]] family members and friends who do not approve of Scientology.

It is a proselytic organization, drawing in new members through free personality tests. No matter how one scores on the personality test, the tester informs the inductee that that there is something wrong with their personality that Scientology can help with. This leads to a process called "auditing", involving a device called an E-meter. The E-meter is a device with two handles that measures the electrical resistance in the human body. According to Scientology doctrine, this device measures "thetans", which are distraught [[soul|souls]] inhabiting our body.

Scientology has various stages that members pass through, which get progressively more expensive as the Scientologist is compelled to purchase more and more materials and books related to the doctrine. After spending about $360,000, the Scientologist reaches [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/OTIII/ stage OT III], where the story behind the thetans is revealed.

It begins 75 million years ago with a galactic dictator named [[Xenu]], who had a problem with overpopulation on many of the planets he ruled over. He tricked billions of aliens into being frozen and loaded onto rocket ships which were exactly like DC-8 airliners except with rocket engines. The rocket ships were sent to Earth, then called "Teegeeack", and the aliens were placed next to several specifically named volcanoes (most of which were not even in existence 75 million years ago, unbeknownst to geologists of Hubbard's time), and exploded with hydrogen bombs. The souls of the dead aliens are said to have roamed the Earth until they could find human bodies to attach to. Scientologists proclaim that thetans occupying our bodies are the source of all our mental problems, and that Scientology is the only way to get rid of the thetans.

*''"I’d like to start a religion. That’s where the money is."''
:: —L. Ron Hubbard to Lloyd A. Eshbach, in 1949; quoted by Eshbach in OVER MY SHOULDER: REFLECTIONS ON A SCIENCE FICTION ERA, Donald M. Grant Publisher. ISBN 1-880418-11-8, 1983

And so it can be assumed from the above quote and from the sheer absurdity of the cult itself (even with regard to religion) that Scientology is nothing more than a grandiose money-making scheme invented by an unscrupulous charlatan with no regard for the psychological well-being of others.

==E-meter==
The E-Meter is a variation of a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatstone_bridge Wheatstone Bridge], which determines resistance of an unknown component, in this case, the skin of the subject. Due to galvanic skin response, the resistance of skin can vary significantly in conjunction with the state of mind of the subject.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=3290589

==Security Checks==
The e-meter is primarily used as a tool for "auditing", however, it is also used as a makeshift lie detector during "[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scientology_Security_Checks Security Checks]", which are semi-annual interrogations used to discover criminal and subversive behavior in people as young as 6 years. The church may use information derived from these checks to blackmail individuals who become critical of the cult. The church has methods of interrogating even uncooperative subjects. By strapping the e-meter's electrodes to the soles of the feet, or into the armpits of the subject and asking questions, the interrogator can determine answers even if the subject refuses to speak.

==External links==
*[http://www.scientology.org/ Official website of the Church of Scientology]
*[http://www.xenu.net/ Operation Clambake: The Inner Secrets Of Scientology]
*[http://www.rickross.com/groups/scientology.html Rick A. Ross Institute's Scientology page]
*[http://youfoundthecard.com/scientology-kills.php Scientology Kills]
*[http://fiction.wikia.com/wiki/Scientoligeist_-_The_Curse_of_Xenu Scientoligeist - The Curse of Xenu] a humorous play about ghosts and other paranormal stuff that draws readers' attention to problems with Scientology while entertaining them.

==Podcasts==
*[http://infidelguy.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=174795# The Way of Reason - The Truth About Scientology]
*[http://www.dogmafreeamerica.com/index.php?post_id=172064# Dogma Free America - Interview with Valerie Emanuel of scientology-kills.org]

[[Category:Religions]]

Evangelism

2011-07-09T04:10:45Z

Eyedunno: sentence fragment

{{religion-stub}}
'''Evangelism''' is the process of [[preaching]] or [[proselytizing]] the Christian Gospel. It is mostly associated with [[Fundamentalist]] [[Protestant]] sects of [[Christianity]]. It is based on the Greek word ευανγγελιον, meaning 'good news'. Though most, if not all, Christian sects stress the importance of evangelism, it is considered absolutely essential to [[Fundamentalist]] sects. It is also known as the Great Commission or "winning souls for Christ". Christians point to Matt. 28, 19-20 in the [[Bible]] as one of [[Jesus Christ]]'s commands to his followers to "preach the gospel (ευανγγελιον) to all nations." Evangelism is the main driving force of Christian [[missionary]] activity, and as such has contributed to the violent deaths of uncounted numbers of people.
{{Wikipedia|Evangelism}}

Orthodox Judaism

2011-07-09T04:00:25Z

Eyedunno: spelling, etc.

'''Orthodox Judaism is ''' is the contemporary form of traditional Judaism. Most Jews are secular or belong to other Jewish religious movements or even other religions (Judaism being their cultural heritage rather than their religion), but there are still over a million Orthodox Jews and these are considered "the" Jews by many. Note that religious Jews in the US are far more likely to follow [[Reform Judaism]].

== What Is Orthodox Judaism? ==

Jewish Orthodoxy is distinguished by its belief in the Oral Law. According to this tradition, [[Moses]] received the [[Torah]] and wrote it down in the desert of Sinai, but also received a set of instructions elaborating on the Torah and how to interpret it along with it. It was forbidden to write these instructions down, and so they passed down orally from teacher to student until the fall of the [[Second Temple]], when it was decided that they must be written down to preserve them at around 200 CE. These teachings form the [[Mishna]], the earlier part of the [[Talmud]]. Orthodoxy then piles on generations of interpretation and discussion of these additional laws, legends, and ethical teachings, creating a body of legal precedent that forms the legal structure called [[Halacha]]. Since the Halacha is based on the laws given to Moses at Sinai directly by [[God]], Orthodoxy is extremely conservative and unwilling to change it; the laws are seen as eternal, deriving for all time from God himself.

The historical truth is that the [[Pharisees]] invented the concept of an Oral Law, that must not be written down, in the Second Temple period as part of their struggle with the [[Sadducees]], another Jewish sect. The Sadducees were a literate, Temple- and Priest-based tradition that had its own oral and interpretive traditions (not significantly different from those of the Pharisees). The Pharisees were a populist movement of preachers that preached to and taught the poor, who were often illiterate, so the invention of a body of knowledge that could not be written down but had to be memorized was better accepted amongst its disciples and put Sadducee attempts at counter-preaching at a disadvantage. This invention also led to its authority as not mere tradition, but rather a sacred Divine-word tradition. With the fall of the Second Temple, the Temple-based Sadducees were effectively wiped-out and the Pharisees rose to power under Roman patronship. Under these conditions it became reasonable and desirable to write down the "Oral Law", and so the old injunction against doing so was overridden. Orthodoxy arose from these Pharisees.

Orthodoxy includes a relatively wide range of beliefs and factions, but can generally be divided into three movements:

* The '''Haredi''' Jews emphasize the legalistic study of the Halacha across all members of society, and disrespect secular studies and customs. They maintain traditional (often Polish) attire, and keep themselves as separated from secular and gentile society as possible - living in closed communities, forbidding non-work-related Internet use, and so on. They (typically ignorantly) reject modern [[Biblical Criticism]], [[Evolution]], and so on. They are a closed-minded religious [[cult]], ostracizing those who stray and indoctrinating their children.

* The '''Hasidic''' Jews are somewhat similar, but emphasize more [[mystic]] learnings and engaging in euphoric religious rituals and practices designed to achieve religious [[ecstasy]] or simply exuberant joy. They place far less emphasis on scholarly and legalistic studies of the Halacha, focusing instead on semi-intellectual studies of mystic texts and traditions such as [[Kabbalah]]. As the basis of Orthodox belief, however, Halacha is still studied, of course.

* The '''Modern''' Orthodox are less traditional, dressing in modern garb and often encouraging their children to learn and form their own opinions, although of course teaching them their own Orthodox beliefs. Modern Orthodox Jews tend to accept at least part of Biblical Criticism, modern science, and so on, but still often reject them on the whole. They include a wider variety of adherents, from traditionalists that are barely distinguishable from Haredis to atheists that preserve only the letters of the Halacha and tradition as a cultural choice. Modern Orthodox society still values the study of Halacha enormously and most of its members study it to some degree, but it also values secular studies and engagement with secular society. They are often highly Messianic and place great importance on the state of [[Israel (State)]]. Within Israel, modern Orthodox groups form the bedrock of the settler movement and of racist anti-Arab groups, and Orthodox religion is highly correlated with racist views and opinions.

Orthodoxy is to be distinguished from secular and reform Judaism, that (broadly) accept modern science and knowledge and deny the authority of the Oral Law. Reform Judaism responds by maintaining more traditions, beliefs, and customs, including most notably the belief in the divine nature of the scriptures and interpretive traditions (even while allowing that they are only human, albeit "inspired", creations, and thus can be overruled and rejected in places). Secular Jews typically reject all or nearly all traditional Jewish beliefs and the sanctity of the texts and oral traditions, but maintain holidays and certain customs out of tradition and as a culture. Most Jews are currently secular, with Reform Judaism being the largest religious current and Modern Orthodoxy the next largest. However, the more religious Jews tend to have larger families and demographic trends (especially amongst the cult-like Heredis, where leaving the cult is almost unthinkable and practically impossible) seem to indicate a reversal of this state within half a century, where Orthodox Judaism is expected to become the dominant Jewish religion.

== Principles of Faith ==

Orthodox Jewish rabbis and communities differ from each other in their beliefs and customs, so it is not possible to provide a single list of Orthodox beliefs. Here are some common ones, however.

* Monotheism. Orthodox Jews believe in an omnipotent god that is the Creator of everything, and is One and Only - there are no other Gods in this sense. They often don't believe in any other gods, although some do believe in spirits and even demons. As God is the Creator, he created these too.

* Providence. God is Good, and everything is part of His Plan. Orthodoxy distinguishes between two levels to this: the general construction of the world is designed for the benefit of mankind ("Hashgacha Clalit", general providence), and specific acts by god on an everyday basis reward the virtuous and show the path to righteousness in one's life ("Hashgacha Pratit", private providence).

* Oral and Written Law are the Words of God. These are literally the words of god written down, and without any blemish or error. The "written" law here refers to the [[Torah]], while the Oral Law to the [[Mishna]], the earliest and central parts of the [[Talmud]]. As words of God, both contain deep "levels" of meaning and truths that reside below the surface meaning, and can be ascertained by their study.

* Halacha is binding. The correct interpretation of the Oral and Written Laws is the Halacha, as formed by generations of later commentators. Jews must abide by its laws. While there is room for reinterpretation by contemporary rabbis, overruling past laws is generally out of line.

* The Bible is correct. The Hebrew Bible, which is essentially the [[Old Testament]], is a correct and inspired work. While not the actual word of God, it is essentially without blemish. Most other holy texts, including those of Christianity and Islam, are false human creations. The exception are some Jewish books that accept and proceed from the Bible and Oral Law, including works such as the [[Zohar]].

* The Fall in Generations. Generally speaking, the earlier the better. Abraham was the most pious man, Moses was the greatest of the prophets, the rabbis that wrote down the Talmud are greater than later great rabbis, and so on. We are a decadent generation, dimly carrying the past glory. For this reason, one cannot override past rulings - they were made by people greater than yourselves, so even if their reasoning seems flawed there must be a deeper reason for their decision. This has exceptions, but for the most part the earlier the ruling is the more difficult it is to overturn it.

* Divine command theory. What is moral is what God commands. There are variants of it, but generally all conform to the idea that one must do what God commands.

* Young Earth Creationism. While some modern Orthodox reject it, many do not and overall Orthodox Jews believe in the literal narrative of the Bible, including the physical Adam and Eve, the Flood, and so on. The Jewish calendar even starts the count of years from the creation of the world (5771 years ago as of 2011 BCE, if you're wondering). This view is also held by many Christians (cf: http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Earth).

[[Category:Judaism]]

Ten Commandments

2011-07-09T02:37:22Z

Eyedunno: In the interrest of fairness, tried to make portion about Catholicism fall in line better with Catholic views

{{wikipedia}}
The '''Ten Commandments''' are laws given by [[God]] ([[Yahweh]]) to the [[Jew]]s via [[Moses]] in the [[Bible]], and are considered the most important laws in [[Judaism]] and [[Christianity]].

The Ten Commandments are given in {{bible|Exodus 20:1-17}} ([[KJV]]):
{{Ten Commandments}}
# [[1st commandment|Thou shalt have no other gods before me.]]
# [[2nd commandment|Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image]], or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. [...]
# [[3rd commandment|Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain;]] for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
# [[4th commandment|Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.]] Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates [...]
# [[5th commandment|Honour thy father and thy mother:]] that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
# [[6th commandment|Thou shalt not kill.]]
# [[7th commandment|Thou shalt not commit adultery.]]
# [[8th commandment|Thou shalt not steal.]]
# [[9th commandment|Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.]]
# [[10th commandment|Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife,]] nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

They appear in virtually the same form in {{bible|Deuteronomy 5:6-21}}.

==Differing versions==

[[Catholic]]s and [[Protestant]]s use slightly different versions of the Ten Commandments, based partly on different methods of dividing up the verses in Deuteronomy. The Catholic and Lutheran version does not treat as a separate commandment the prohibition against graven images — an obvious problem for the Roman Catholic church which is rife with shrines and statues. To make up for this, Catholics divide verse 21 into two commandments, thus separating the coveting of a wife from the coveting of farm animals. The Protestant versions of the Ten Commandments retain the prohibition against graven images, but it seems to be ignored since statues and other images have proliferated in their churches as well.

Another, substantially different version of the Ten Commandments appears in {{bible|Exodus 34:12-26}}:
{{wikipedia|Ritual Decalogue}}
# Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee: But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
# For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice; And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.
# Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
# The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.
# All that openeth the matrix is mine; and every firstling among thy cattle, whether ox or sheep, that is male. But the firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb: and if thou redeem him not, then shalt thou break his neck. All the firstborn of thy sons thou shalt redeem. And none shall appear before me empty.
# Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time and in harvest thou shalt rest.
# And thou shalt observe the feast of weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the year's end. Thrice in the year shall all your menchildren appear before the LORD God, the God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before thee, and enlarge thy borders: neither shall any man desire thy land, when thou shalt go up to appear before the LORD thy God thrice in the year.
# Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven; neither shall the sacrifice of the feast of the passover be left unto the morning.
# The first of the firstfruits of thy land thou shalt bring unto the house of the LORD thy God.
# Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

This latter version is believed by scholars to predate the other two. It is explicitly labelled as "the ten commandments" (in {{bible|Exodus 34:28}}), whereas the better known version is not.

Even Christ's version of the commandments is different. In three of the gospels, someone asks Jesus what the commandments are, and they receive three different answers, depending on which gospel is being read - but in all cases, only five or six commandments are given:

* {{bible|Matthew 19:17-19}}: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

* {{bible|Mark 10:19}}: Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.

* {{bible|Luke 18:20}}: Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother.

==The Ten Commandments in United States politics==
[[Image:ten_commandments.jpg|thumb|The FOE ten commandments monument at the Texas state capitol building in Austin]]
Starting in 1954, the [[Fraternal Order of Eagles]] (FOE), with encouragement from movie director [[Cecil B. DeMille]] (director of the 1956 movie ''[[Wikipedia:The Ten Commandments (1956 film)|The Ten Commandments]]''), began producing granite monuments displaying the Ten Commandments. Today, there are 145 such monuments documented in 34 states, plus one in Canada.

The monuments actually display ''eleven'' commandments, since they use elements of both the Catholic and Protestant versions. The commandments are not explicitly numbered on the monuments, but the second commandment is about graven images (as in the Protestant version), and the tenth and eleventh commandments treat the different versions of coveting separately (as in the Catholic version).

==Counter-apologetics==

A common claim by those who believe that [[America is a Christian nation]] is that United States [[law]] is somehow based on the Ten Commandments. They point primarily to the laws such as "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not bear false witness," and "Thou shalt not steal" to claim that these are the basis for modern law.

In fact these sorts of laws have existed in societies throughout history, including societies which significantly predate the [[Old Testament]]. The [[Code of Hammurabi]] is a good example.

Most of the other commandments have marginal relevance to modern American law, or none at all.
*''No other gods before me:'' Instituting this as a law would violate freedom of religion, as protected by the first amendment.
*''No creation of idols:'' Instituting this as a law would would violate freedom of religion and freedom of speech, both protected by first amendment
*''No taking the lord's name in vain:'' Instituting this law would violate freedom of speech.
*''Remember the Sabbath day:'' [[blue laws|Blue laws]] exist in many states, however, every time these laws have been challenged, they have been found unconstitutional. Certainly there is no federal law demanding observation of the sabbath. Instituting this as a law would violate freedom of religion. Furthermore, which day is the sabbath, friday, saturday, sunday, or one of the other days?
*''Honor thy father and mother:'' With the exception of unruly children laws, which apply only to minors, instituting this as a law would violate freedom of speech.
*''Adultery:'' It is grounds for [[divorce]] and alimony, but it is not punished in any way to indicate that it is a real crime. Instituting this law would violate a number of human rights.
*''Coveting:'' Instituting this as a law would violate the right to pursue happiness, and would be contradictory to any capitalist system.

Promoters of the Ten Commandments [[cherry picking|cherry pick]] the Bible. In the chapter immediately following the Ten Commandments ({{bible|Exodus 21}}), God gives various instructions on how to properly conduct [[slavery]], including the rules for selling one's own daughter as a slave. There is no obvious reason why God's instructions in Exodus 20 are moral and should be followed today, but not God's instructions in Exodus 21.

==External links==
* [http://www.religioustolerance.org/hoffman01.htm The Real History of the Ten Commandments Project] at [[Religious Tolerance]]
* [http://www.positiveatheism.org/crt/whichcom.htm Which Ten Commandments?] at [[Positive Atheism]]
* [http://atheism.about.com/od/tencommandments/a/prot_cath_3.htm Different Versions of the Ten Commandments] at [[atheism.about.com]]
* [http://www.atheists.org/Hang_the_Commandments_--_All_30_of_Them Hang the Commandments - All 30 of Them] by Frank Zindler at [[American Atheists]]
* [http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/06/ten-commandments-jesus-couldnt-name.html The Ten Commandments: Jesus couldn't name them all either] at [[Dwindling in Unbelief]]
* [http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/sixth.html What was the sixth commandment on Jesus' list of "the commandments?"] at [[The Skeptic's Annotated Bible]]
* [http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/command.htm The Ten Commandments] in the [http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/ccc_toc.htm Catechism of the Catholic Church]

{{Christianity}}

[[Category:Bible]]
[[Category:Commandments]]

2nd commandment

2011-07-09T02:29:58Z

Eyedunno: Improved accuracy of portion on Catholicism and fixed a sentence fragment

{{Ten Commandments}}
{{Bible|Exodus 20:4-6}}:
{{Bible-verse|4|Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.}}
{{Bible-verse|5|Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;}}
{{Bible-verse|6|And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.}}

{{Bible|Deuteronomy 5:8-10}}:
{{Bible-verse|8|Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth:}}
{{Bible-verse|9|Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,}}
{{Bible-verse|10|And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.}}

{{Bible|Exodus 34:14-16}}:
{{Bible-verse|14|For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:}}
{{Bible-verse|15|Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a whoring after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice;}}
{{Bible-verse|16|And thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go a whoring after their gods, and make thy sons go a whoring after their gods.}}

Though typically shortened to ''Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image'' the 2nd commandment is the longest commandment serving as a complete prohibition against making any likeness of anything in air, land, or sea. Bowing before such likenesses is also prohibited. This is because God is jealous.

The "iniquity" will be visited unto the third and fourth generations.

==Counter-apologetics==
*God will punish you because your great grandfather drew a picture of a fish. At face value, this commandment rules out all art!
*It is telling that the [[Catholicism|Catholic]]s (and [[Lutheranism|Lutheran]]s) downplay this particular commandment by merging it with the [[1st commandment|1st]] and divide up the [[10th commandment]] into coveting wife and house separately. This is mostly because, some would say, Catholicism is all about the graven images. Many Jewish divisions of the ten commandments also ignore this commandment, dividing up the [[1st commandment]] into ''I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt'' and ''Thou shalt have no other gods before me.'' replacing the 2nd.

==In United States law==
*The 2nd commandment is not a part of any U.S. law or custom. This statement, ironically, appears on a graven image monolith of the Ten Commandments in many locations. The U.S. government sets aside grants specifically to fund and encourage the breaking of this commandment by artists. If this commandment was a law, it would violate free speech.

[[Category:Commandments]]

Creation Science Movement

2011-07-09T01:48:57Z

Eyedunno:

The Creation Science Movement is a UK organisation, which according to its website [https://www.csm.org.uk/]:

:''". . .is the oldest creationist movement in the world; founded in 1932 as the Evolution Protest Movement by leading members of the Victoria Institute who were concerned at the scientific, ethical and theological consequences that belief in Evolution brings to society."''

The organisation has charitable status (Charity no: 801745). According to [http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/registeredcharities/showcharity.asp?chyno=801745 financial statements submitted to the Charity Commission], its income exceeded expenditures for the past four years.
The organisation claims to be part of the [[Evangelical Alliance]] [http://www.eauk.org/].

The Creation Science Movement runs a [https://www.csm.org.uk/expo.php Genesis Exhibition] in the South Coast UK City of Portsmouth, which appears to promote the same themes as the USA [[Creation Science Museum]], built by [[Ken Ham]] in Kentucky, including:

; The impossibility of life forming from chemicals.
: See [[Abiogenesis]].

; Chinese calligraphy refers back to Genesis.
: Perhaps alluding to [http://www.answersingenesis.org/Docs/388.asp this article] from "Answers in Genesis", which appears to imply that Chinese characters, made from a combination of other characters [[Chinese characters and the Bible|indicate a link to the Biblical god]]. For example, the symbol for [http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/Magazines/images/203kanji08.gif "Tempter"] is constructed from "Devil" (made from the symbols for "Secret", "Man", "Garden" and "Alive"), combined with the symbol for "Trees" and "Cover".

; The present day forms remain unchanged from their fossil counterparts.
: Evolution is not thought to be a ladder, so whilst some species will have evolved, others will have remained almost unchanged, therefore any species which has changed will not have an unchanged fossil. See [[Gaps in the fossil record]].

; Geological sediments are laid down rapidly.
: See the article on [[Noah's ark]].

; A study of genetics shows that all humanity came from one man and one woman.
: Perhaps a misunderstanding of the concepts of [[wikipedia:Mitochondrial Eve|Mitochondrial Eve]] and [[wikipedia:Y-chromosomal Adam|Y-chromosomal Adam]]. These are the terms given to the matrilineal and patrilinieal [[wikipedia:most recent common ancestor|most recent common ancestor]]s of present-day humanity. It should be noted that m-Eve lived approximately 140,000 years ago, while y-Adam lived only 60,000 years ago, so while the terms borrow the biblical names, the actual concept has nothing to do with the stories in [[Genesis]].

[[Category:Organizations]]

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-08T19:41:56Z

Eyedunno:

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] and other [[Biblical literalism|Biblical literalists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known outside of the Ancient Near East, supposedly lending credibility to a literal interpretation of such stories as the [[Noah's ark|worldwide flood of Noah]] and the confusion of man's languages at Babel.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in ''The Discovery of Genesis'' (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” ''[禁]'' is composed of the symbol for “two trees” ''[林]'' and “command” ''[示]'' and the symbol for “desire” ''[婪]'' consists of symbols for “two trees” ''[林]'' and “woman” ''[女]''.}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% of those in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by literalists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the case of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation. Ultimately, Chinese characters comprise a kind of syllabary (specifically a morphosyllabic writing system, in the terminology of DeFrancis), and treating the Chinese writing system as somehow directly encoding meanings without recourse to pronunciation is a trap that people unfamiliar with Chinese (and occasionally even native speakers) are frequently prone to fall into, but it should generally be avoided. In the words of linguist Arika Okrent (2009):
{{Quote|Chinese writing doesn't represent spoken language in the same way that alphabetic writing does, but it still represents spoken language - just in a much more complicated way.}}
And, in a more humorous take on the treatment of Chinese as particularly unique, [http://www.cracked.com/article_18821_5-examples-americans-thinking-foreign-people-are-magic_p2.html Cracked.com columnist Christina H.] offers the following:
{{Quote|For years, motivational speakers and the like have been touting how the Chinese word for "crisis" is made of "danger" and "opportunity," which (1) [http://pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html is bullshit] and (2) is a little insulting as it implies Chinese words were created to teach lessons, unlike any other culture where words are created because you need to say that thing.}}
{{Quote|What would you think if you saw a Chinese motivational speaker teaching his audience that female family members cannot be relied upon to keep their heads in a crisis because the English word for crisis is made of "cry" and "sis"? You laugh, but considering there's 1.3 billion Chinese, someone's probably doing it.}}

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Biblical literalist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that literalists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 'earth' (but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 'mouth' (but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which these literalists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 'iron' is a shorthand version (used mainly in Japanese and, with slight modification, in Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵. It originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on the modern usage as shorthand for 'iron'. Biblical literalist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and there is also a false cultural assumption about a relationship between the word for 'tongue' and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===References===
* DeFrancis, John. ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.
* Okrent, Arika. ''In the Land of Invented Languages''. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2009.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Bible]]
[[Category:Creationism]]

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-08T18:25:47Z

Eyedunno:

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] and other [[Biblical literalism|Biblical literalists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known outside of the Ancient Near East, supposedly lending credibility to a literal interpretation of such stories as the [[Noah's ark|worldwide flood of Noah]] and the confusion of man's languages at Babel.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in ''The Discovery of Genesis'' (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” ''[禁]'' is composed of the symbol for “two trees” ''[林]'' and “command” ''[示]'' and the symbol for “desire” ''[婪]'' consists of symbols for “two trees” ''[林]'' and “woman” ''[女]''.}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by literalists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the case of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation. Ultimately, Chinese characters comprise a kind of syllabary (specifically a morphosyllabic writing system, in the terminology of DeFrancis), and treating the Chinese writing system as somehow directly encoding meanings without recourse to pronunciation is a trap that people unfamiliar with Chinese (and occasionally even native speakers) are frequently prone to, but should generally try to avoid. In the words of linguist Arika Okrent (2009):
{{Quote|Chinese writing doesn't represent spoken language in the same way that alphabetic writing does, but it still represents spoken language - just in a much more complicated way.}}
And, in a more humorous take on the treatment of Chinese as particularly unique, [http://www.cracked.com/article_18821_5-examples-americans-thinking-foreign-people-are-magic_p2.html Cracked.com columnist Christina H.] offers the following:
{{Quote|For years, motivational speakers and the like have been touting how the Chinese word for "crisis" is made of "danger" and "opportunity," which (1) [http://pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html is bullshit] and (2) is a little insulting as it implies Chinese words were created to teach lessons, unlike any other culture where words are created because you need to say that thing.}}
{{Quote|What would you think if you saw a Chinese motivational speaker teaching his audience that female family members cannot be relied upon to keep their heads in a crisis because the English word for crisis is made of "cry" and "sis"? You laugh, but considering there's 1.3 billion Chinese, someone's probably doing it.}}

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Biblical literalist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that literalists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 ('earth', but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 ('mouth', but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which these literalists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 'iron' is a shorthand version (used mainly in Japanese and, with slight modification, in Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵. It originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on the modern usage as shorthand for 'iron'. Biblical literalist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and in so doing also makes a false cultural assumption about a relationship between the word for 'tongue' and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===References===
* DeFrancis, John. ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.
* Okrent, Arika. ''In the Land of Invented Languages''. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2009.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Bible]]
[[Category:Creationism]]

Biblical laws

2011-07-08T07:05:21Z

Eyedunno:

The [[Bible]] contains many laws, and since they were theoretically created by an [[omnibenevolent]] being they should be perfectly just.

While it obviously contains many good laws: Do not murder, do not steal, etc. It also contains quite a few laws that would be considered absurd, unjust, unrealistic, and just plain nasty.

The Bible is also strangly silent on some topics such as pedophilia and public nudity.

==Good laws==
{{Bible|Exodus 20:12-16}} ''" 12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. 13 Thou shalt not kill. 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery. 15 Thou shalt not steal. 16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
"''

==Bad laws==
In the Bible, God openly condones [[slavery]], and gives various laws on how slavery should be conducted, for example in the chapter immediately following the Ten Commandments. {{bible|Exodus 21:7-8}}: ''And if a man sell his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go out as the menservants do. If she please not her master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no power, seeing he hath dealt deceitfully with her.''

God required [[genocide]], sometimes with the specific command to show no mercy. He also allowed the [[Israelites]] to take the [[virgins]] from the nations they conquered, and use them as sex slaves.

One law stated that if a man raped a woman, he would be killed if she was married or engaged... sounds good enough. But if she wasn't married or engaged, a virgin, she would have to marry him! {{bible|Deuteronomy 22:28-29}}: ''If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.''

So with such a lax law on rape, you'd think the death penalty would be all but non-existant. However another law stated that disobediant children should be stoned to death. {{bible|Exodus 21:15-17}}.
And people who commit adultery should also be stoned. ''{{bible|Leviticus 20:10}} "And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death."''
So adultery and disobediance to parents is worse than the rape of a virgin.

Disobediance to parents can theoretically include anything from refusing to clean your room to becoming an atheist. Or punching your abusive father.

What the priests say is law, anyone who disagrees with the preists is stoned. {{bible|Deuteronomy 17:12}}

According to {{bible|Exodus 21:20-21}} Not only is slavery okay, but it's also okay to beat your slaves... even to death! If a man beats his slave to the point that he dies, he will be punished. But if he beats his slave and the slave survives for a day or two before dying, the owner gets off scott free. (Well not quite, he loses a slave). But not only is slavery and the beating of slaves fine, but the slaves are to show utter and true fidelity even whilst being beaten, all to show the image of God as more attractive.

==Ruined laws==
One law that, although it sounds good, turned out horribly would be the [[Sabbath]]: it states that every seventh day should be a day of rest and [[worship]].
But the punishment for not observing this law ruined it. It held the death penalty, so even if you did something simple like for instance: you forget to stack wood before the sabbath, so instead of letting your family freeze you decide to pick up some sticks to burn... that would deserve death according to the law. ({{Bible|Numbers 15:32-36}})

Later [[Jesus]] condemned the [[Pharisees]] for being so strict about the sabbath law. So some might think that god never intended for the rules to be so hard to follow. But that is not supported by the account of the man who was gathering wood, since god specifically told [[Moses]] to kill the man.
Plus if God didn't want them to be so strict, why did he wait so long to inform them?

==Weird laws==
{{Bible|Exodus 20:26}} says that the altar to God should not have steps; otherwise, people might look up the clothes of the person ahead of them.

In {{Bible|Exodus 28:42-43}}, God says that priests must wear special undergarments when they approach the altar, lest they die of guilt.

{{Bible|Deuteronomy 23:1}}, says that if you are wounded in the testicles, or your penis has been cut off you can not get into the congregation of the Lord.

{{Bible|Leviticus 18:7-18}} commands you to not uncover the nakedness of various family members.

{{Bible|Leviticus 18:22}} states that man shall not lay with mankind as he lays with womankind, leaving god to watch some hot lesbian action.

{{Bible|Leviticus 19:19}} says it is not allowed to plant different crops on the same field, let different cattle graze together, or wear cloths made of more the one fabric.

{{Bible|Leviticus 19:27}} says don't cut your hair or or shave your beard.

{{Bible|Leviticus 21:17-18}} makes it impossible for People who have flat noses, or is blind or lame, to go to an alter of god.

{{Bible|Deuteronomy 13:6-10}} tells you to kill anyone who suggests worshiping a different religion, even your family.

{{Bible|Leviticus 3:17}}, you are never to eat blood or fat.

{{Bible|Leviticus 15:19-30}} says that a woman on her period is unclean and not to be touched. The only cure for this sin of uncleanness is burning a turtle or a young pigeon.

==Apologists' defence==
===But that's the old Bible===
When confronted with the unjust laws, which are found mostly in the Hebrew scriptures, Christians will sometimes say that they only accept the Christian Greek scripture. Which contains more wholesome principles like the [[golden rule]] or 'forgiving your brother up to 77 times'.
But one still has to wonder why it took god over four thousand years before he introduced the good laws. Or why he made bad laws to begin with.

===Civil Law versus Moral Law===
One tactic, often employed by [[Ray Comfort]] is to dismiss weird laws as "civil" pertaining to general advice as opposed to commandments. While it can seem applicable for reasonable advice at the time, it fails to address the clearly bad advice and immoral commandments.

==External links==
* [http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_10co.htm All about the Decalogue]
[[Category:Bible]]
[[Category:Law]]

Bad arguments against the existence of God

2011-07-08T07:01:59Z

Eyedunno:

{{argument-stub}}
Bad arguments against the existence of God are those that most theists will easily rationalize their way out of or that are frequently misused by atheists. These may be [[logical fallacies]], or paradoxes that theists can explain away.

== Omniscience Versus Free Will ==
Some atheists will argue that since God supposedly knows everything, then everything is predestined. Since many theists do not accept the [[predestination]] doctrine, this appears to be a dilemma: either they must accept predestination or God is not omniscient.

[[Apologists]] who do not accept predestination may get out of this problem by arguing that God simply knows every possible outcome of every possible decision anyone can make, thus resolving the dilemma.

God allegedly knows every possible outcome. God does not know which outcome actually will happen Therefore God is not omniscient.

Apologists who do believe in predestination may disregard free will entirely.

This argument can easily become a straw man argument. It attacks the theist's position based on the assumption that he holds to a single, strict definition of omniscience. In reality, many resolve the paradox by:
* separating total omniscience (knowing absolutely everything) from inherent omniscience (having the ability to know anything one chooses to know), and attributing the latter to God.
* defining omniscience as knowing all things that can be known naturally (all things and events past and present). "Knowledge" of the future is limited to prediction and planned intervention.

== Not wanting there to be a god / Hating God ==
In ''The Last Word'', Thomas Nagel
[http://books.google.com/books?id=COkPRvqFL7oC&pg=PA130&vq=%22I+don't+want+there+to+be+a+god%22 wrote]:
{{quote|It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.}}
This is not a valid reason for disbelief: God either exists or doesn't exist, regardless of what we want.

Similarly, [[maltheism]] - the idea that god is evil - requires the existence of god.
1. I hate God
2. Therefore, God does not exist

This argument is invalid due to the contradictory nature of hating something that does not exist.

== Religion as conspiracy ==
Films such as [[Zeitgeist]] have led some atheists to believe that religion is some sort of conspiratorial effort to control people. While there is an argument to be made that religion does control people, it is certainly not the case that religious authorities in general are actively, cynically manipulating people for their own ends. Sometimes, atheists arguing this point will quote Karl Marx out of context as saying that "Religion is the opium of the people." This is meant to imply that leaders use religion as a method of keeping the people complacent. In fact, Marx was not implying this at all. The quote in context reads:

{{quote|Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.}}

Marx is saying that religion gives people false hope, not that it fosters complacency. Marx makes a good argument here, but it is not the argument many people think it is. On a practical note, using arguments put forth by a Communist should be done sparingly, as many theists will jump at the opportunity to use an [[ad hominem]] attack accusing atheists of being Communists.

== Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, and Relativity ==
While there are legitimate arguments to be made using these physics concepts, they should only be made by people who are very well-versed in the science. Most people are not familiar enough with these concepts to use the arguments effectively. Furthermore, lay audiences will almost certainly not be familiar enough with the science to follow the arguments very well. This means that the audience will either lose interest in the discussion or be naively persuaded by the smoother talker, even if they're wrong.

[[Category:Bad arguments against religion]]

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-08T06:57:50Z

Eyedunno:

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known outside of the Ancient Near East, supposedly lending credibility to a literal interpretation of such stories as the [[Noah's ark|worldwide flood of Noah]] and the confusion of man's languages at Babel.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in ''The Discovery of Genesis'' (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” ''[禁]'' is composed of the symbol for “two trees” ''[林]'' and “command” ''[示]'' and the symbol for “desire” ''[婪]'' consists of symbols for “two trees” ''[林]'' and “woman” ''[女]''.}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by creationists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the cases of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation.

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Creationist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that creationists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 ('earth', but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 ('mouth', but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which creationists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 'iron' is a shorthand version (used mainly in Japanese and, with slight modification, in Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵. It originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on the modern usage as shorthand for 'iron'. Creationist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and in so doing also makes a false cultural assumption about a relationship between the word for 'tongue' and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===Reference===
* DeFrancis, John. ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Bible]]
[[Category:Creationism]]

Abiogenesis

2011-07-08T06:54:31Z

Eyedunno:

{{Wikipedia|Abiogenesis}}
'''Abiogenesis''' is the scientific study of the origin of [[life]] from inorganic matter. It is an ongoing area of research in the natural sciences. Though many concepts about the beginning of life have been proposed and even demonstrated, and there is a rough framework for the overall stages of the process, as of yet, a standard model of abiogenesis has not been developed.

Abiogenesis should not be confused with [[evolution]], the study of how living things change over time, or [[cosmogony]], the study of the origin of the universe.

The term "abiogenesis" was coined in 1870 by [[Thomas Henry Huxley]], an advocate for [[Charles Darwin]]'s theory of evolution. It comes from the ancient Greek "a-" (not) + "bios" (life) + "genesis" (origin). That is, the origin of life from non-life.

The term is used in reference to the scientific study thereof, to the exclusion of religious [[creation myth]]s. Some confusion has arisen from the fact that the term has been used to describe the archaic theory that complex life can arise from non-life, such as maggots growing in meat. This is not the sense in which the word is used by modern researchers. Equating the archaic and modern usage in an attempt to discredit a modern theory is a [[straw man]] argument.

==Abiogenesis and evolution==
While [[evolution]] explains how self-replicating entities change over time, abiogenesis is the study of how self-replicators arose in the first place, and how evolution got started. It is thus related to evolution, but distinct.

[[Creationist]]s often claim that since scientists do not know how life started, that this makes the theory of evolution invalid or baseless. This is untrue: just as it is not necessary to know the history of the internal combustion engine to understand how an automobile works, evolutionary biologists can study how populations evolve today without necessarily knowing how life arose.

==Abiogenesis and spontaneous generation==
Creationists often claim that [[Wikipedia:Francesco Redi|Francesco Redi]] disproved abiogenesis in 1668 by showing that flies do not appear on meat if the meat is sealed from outside contamination. This idea often manifests in the so-called [[Chuck Missler's jar of peanut butter|Peanut Butter]] argument against evolution.

In fact, Redi disproved the theory of [[wikipedia:spontaneous generation|spontaneous generation]], the idea that fully-formed modern flies spontaneously arise from meat.

After the invention of the microscope by van Leuwenhoek in 1683 and the subsequent discovery of bacteria it was thought that abiogenesis occurred among microscopic creatures. In the nineteenth century, [[Wikipedia:Louis Pasteur|Louis Pasteur]] sterilized broth by boiling for fifteen minutes and then sealed it in a glass flask. After several months he noticed that dust had settled on the flask, but no micro-organisms had formed within the broth.

Current models of abiogenesis make no such claim. Rather, researchers try to figure out which [[wikipedia:organic molecule|organic molecule]]s could have been formed under the conditions of the early Earth, how they might have combined to form [[Wikipedia:RNA|RNA]], [[Wikipedia:DNA|DNA]], [[wikipedia:cell membrane|cell membrane]]s, [[wikipedia:cell metabolism|metabolism]], etc.

==A multitude of hypotheses==
Since evidence indicates life arose about 3.7 billion years ago, it is very difficult to find fossil remains of the earliest life forms. Many chemicals thought to have played a part in the origin of life do not last long under the conditions which they may be found today. The rocks where they might otherwise be found might have been contaminated by geologic processes, and many of them may have been [[Wikipedia:Subduction|subducted]] into the Earth's [[wikipedia:mantle|mantle]]. Nonetheless, there are numerous hypotheses as to how life ''could'' have arisen.

Some researchers believe that life arose on the surface of the Earth, perhaps as an oily film on the surface of the ocean, or in calmer tidal pools; the surface is, after all, where most living things are found today. Others argue that the surface of the early earth was bombarded with [[wikipedia:ultraviolet light|ultraviolet rays]] that would have broken down organic molecules almost as soon as they were formed, and thus these molecules could not have accumulated in sufficient concentrations to permit interesting [[wikipedia:Chemical reaction|reactions]] to take place.

It is also possible that life arose deep under the ocean, protected from ultraviolet rays, around [[wikipedia:hydrothermal vent|hydrothermal vent]]s. These could have provided the energy, in the form of heat, necessary for chemicals to form and react with each other.

Some of the chemicals required for life may have fallen to Earth in [[wikipedia:meteorite|meteorite]]s. Many chemicals, including sugar and alcohol, can form in gas clouds in outer space, and may therefore have been part of the composition of the Earth from the very beginning of its formation. Others may have fallen to Earth later. Meteorites known as [[wikipedia:carbonaceous chondrite|carbonaceous chondrite]]s contain many types of organic molecules, even after falling through the atmosphere and crashing to Earth.

It is hypothesized that minerals, including [[wikipedia:clay|clay]]s, may have played a role in the origin of life: if certain [[wikipedia:amino acid|amino acid]]s become attached to a clay surface, the clay in effect holds them in place, allowing other amino acids to become attached to the original ones.

Other minerals have microscopic pores, which may have been filled with interacting molecules, thus in effect playing the role of a primitive cell wall. However, it is known that [[wikipedia:lipid|lipid]]s can spontaneously form hollow spheres in water. Thus, it is not clear whether metabolism came before cell membranes or vice-versa.

It is possible that we will never know exactly how life arose on Earth, but it may be possible to come up with a handful of likely scenarios.

==The Urey-Miller experiment==
In 1951, [[Wikipedia:Harold Urey|Harold Urey]] and his graduate student Stanley Miller conducted a seminal experiment: they filled a glass vessel with water, [[wikipedia:methane|methane]], [[wikipedia:ammonia|ammonia]], and [[wikipedia:hydrogen|hydrogen]], by which they hoped to model the ocean and early atmosphere of the Earth (note that today we have a different picture of the composition of the early atmosphere). Two electrodes in the vessel produced sparks, simulating lightning. The vessel was connected by a tube to a condenser and a second chamber, from which samples could be withdrawn and analyzed.

Within a few days, the water turned yellow and dark "muck" had appeared on the walls of the vessel. This turned out to contain [[wikipedia:glycine|glycine]], an amino acid. Later on, several other amino acids and other organic molecules were found.

Later experiments not only [[scientific method|confirmed]] the results of the Urey-Miller experiment itself, but expanded on it, showing that many organic molecules are easy to synthesize under a wide variety of conditions, including different atmospheric compositions and energy sources.

Miller and Urey did not create life in the lab, of course, nor does anyone claim that they did. They did, however, demonstrate that molecules essential to living beings can form naturally under likely conditions of early Earth.

===Later results===

One common [[creationist]] argument is that the Urey-Miller experiment only created a few of the amino acids used by life, not life itself. Another is that the gases used by Miller and Urey were different from those actually present on primordial Earth.

According to a [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5900/404 paper published in Science in 2008], researchers were able to reanalyze
the residues from one of the original experiments, and found several
amino acids that instruments in the 1950s were not sensitive enough to
detect. In other words, Miller and Urey were more successful than they
realized.

The paper also argues that the atmosphere used in that experiment may
have been locally realistic. That is, that mixture of gases would not
occur throughout the planet, but only near [[wikipedia:volcano|volcanic eruptions]].

Later studies during the 1960s by [[Wikipedia:Joan Oró|Joan Oró]], et al., that used atmospheric conditions that better match the actual (hypothesized) atmosphere of early Earth turned out to give even better results, turning up for example adenine, which is one of the [[wikipedia:nucleotide base|nucleotide base]]s that form the "backbone" of [[wikipedia:DNA|DNA]].

[[Category:Science]]

Argumentum ad victus

2011-07-08T06:53:58Z

Eyedunno:

'''Argumentum ad victus''' ("argument from food") is not so much a logical [[fallacy]] as it is a growing trend of [[apologists]] to use food as part of their argument for the existence of [[god]], or proof against [[evolution]].

This line of thinking could possibly be related to 'victual [[pareidolia]]', in which images of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or the name "Allah" are seen in food items such as tortillas, grilled cheese sandwiches, and sliced fruit or vegetables.

Argumentum ad victus arguments can come in different forms, such as:

- This food item could not have happened by [[accident]].
- Therefore, God exists.

- This food item does not prove, on it's own, that evolution is a fact.
- Therefore, God exists.

- This food item has an image on it that somewhat resembles the general shape of Jesus/the Virgin Mary.
- Therefore, God exists.

==Examples==

The best-known example of 'argumentum ad victus' is the infamous [[banana argument]] from [[apologist]] [[Ray Comfort]]: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Of90cKxSeuw

Another is the [[Chuck Missler's jar of peanut butter|peanut butter argument]], which attempts to use commercial grade peanut butter as proof that evolution cannot happen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwsdLOmOxFw

Another example is the pickle demonstration, which uses an electrified pickle to demonstrate the alleged change that Jesus Christ will make in a person's life:
http://www.youtube.com/v/7JYIJPjpCFc&hl=en

==Counterarguments==

1. Ray Comfort's Banana argument is soundly defeated with the information that the banana was "created" by man. The modern banana was cultivated from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_balbisiana wild bananas] (similar to plantains), specifically to have the characteristics Ray describes. Wild bananas are green, bland, and have large seeds.

2. The peanut butter argument is defeated by noting the "expiration date" on the jar. Even vacuum sealed, pasteurized jars contain minute amounts of bacteria, and given enough time, these bacteria will multiply to the point that they can be seen with the naked eye.

3. The electrified pickle scenario isn't an argument, but an attempt at a practical demonstration. Had the "experiment" continued, It would soon become an excellent analog for religion. The primary "argument" is that the electrified pickle (representing a true believer) produces light - However, the amount of light produced by this particular method required a tremendous amount of energy, produces at best a dim, flickering light, and would ultimately destroy the pickle, possible setting fire to the rest of the apparatus. Similarly, religion causes harm to the adherent in the form of a distorted world view, and causes harm to the rest of the world due to activities based on misperceptions of reality.

Extending the analogy, a religious viewpoint would consider that only an electrified pickle could produce light, and the only "proper" light would be that produced by the electrified pickle. However, science is not tied to this dogmatic viewpoint. Science is free to abandon pickles when it discovers a better alternative, such as a tungsten filament in a vacuum. Science can later abandon this concept too, in favor of various phosphorescent materials, (Fluorescent bulbs, neon lights, mercury vapor lamps, high-pressure sodium lamps) or even LEDs and lasers, all of which are far more efficient at producing light than the original electrified pickle.

==See also==
* [[Flying spaghetti monster]]

[[Category:humor]]

Template:Biology

2011-07-08T06:47:09Z

Eyedunno:

{{Navbox|name = Biology
|borderstyle={{{borderstyle|border:1px solid grey;" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1"}}}
|titlestyle = background:#FFEEBB;
|title=[[Biology]]
|groupstyle = background:#FDF7DE;

|group1=Evolution
|list1=''[[Overview of genetics]]'' · ''[[Genetic mutation]]'' · ''[[Hereditary change]]'' · ''[[Natural selection]]'' · ''[[Adaptation]]''

|group2=Abiogenesis
|list2=''[[Possible theories of abiogenesis]]'' · ''[[Building blocks of life]]'' · ''[[The Urey-Miller experiment]]''

|group3=Evolutionary straw men
|list3=''[[Life just exploded from nothing]]'' · ''[[So you think we came from monkeys]]'' · ''[[How did the first dog find a mate]]'' · ''[[Crocoducks]]'' · ''[[Banana argument]]'' · ''[[747 Junkyard argument]]'' · ''[[Irreducible complexity]]'' · ''[[Chuck Missler's jar of peanut butter]]'' · ''[[What good is half a wing?]]''

|group4=Notable Biologists
|list4=''[[Charles Darwin]]'' · ''[[Alfred Russel Wallace]]'' · ''[[Thomas Huxley]]'' · ''[[Gregor Mendel]]'' · ''[[Stanley Miller]]'' · ''[[Norman Borlaug]]'' · ''[[Richard Lenski]]'' · ''[[Jerry Coyne]]'' · ''[[Richard Dawkins]]'' · ''[[PZ Myers]]''

|group5=Notable quacks
|list5=''[[William Dembski]]'' · ''[[Michael Behe]]'' · ''[[Geoffrey Simmons]]'' · ''[[Ken Ham]]''

}}

Template:Christianity

2011-07-08T06:45:34Z

Eyedunno:

{{Navbox|name = Christianity
|titlestyle = background:#C6C6C6;
|title=[[Christianity]]
|groupstyle = background:#E7E7E7;

|group1=Christian beliefs
|list1=''[[God]]'' · ''[[Jesus Christ]]'' · ''[[Moses]]'' · ''[[Resurrection]]'' · ''[[Creationism]]'' · ''[[Sin]]'' · ''[[Afterlife]]'' · ''[[Christianity|Other beliefs]]''

|group2=Tenets and dogma
|list2=''[[Ten Commandments]]'' · ''[[Christian dogma|Dogma]]'' · ''[[Christian rituals|Rituals]]'' · ''[[Homosexuality]]''

|group3=Holy texts
|list3=''[[Bible]]'' · ''[[Old Testament]]'' · ''[[New Testament]]'' · ''[[Gospel]]s'' · ''[[Apocrypha]]'' · ''[[Ninety-Five Theses]]'' · ''[[Modern biblical translations]]''

|group4=Christian denominations
|list4=''[[Catholicism]]'' · ''[[Anglicanism]]'' · ''[[Lutheranism]]'' · ''[[Baptist]]'' · ''[[Pentecostal]]'' · ''[[Mormonism]]'' · ''[[Jehovah's Witnesses]]'' · ''[[Denominations of Christianity|Other denominations]]''

|group5=History of Christianity
|list5=''[[Overview of early Christianity]]'' · ''[[Overview of middle Christianity]]'' · ''[[Overview of modern Christianity]]''

|group6=Christianity and politics
|list6=''[[Dominionism]]'' · ''[[America as a Christian nation]]'' · ''[[Australia as a Christian nation]]'' · ''[[Separation of church and state]]'' · ''[[Blue laws]]'' · ''[[Notable Christian political parties]]''

|group7=Christianity and science
|list7=''[[Creation science]]'' · ''[[Intelligent design]]'' · ''[[Quantum mysticism]]''

|group8=Christianity and medicine
|list8=''[[Christian Science]]'' · ''[[Jehovah's Witnesses]]'' · ''[[Abortion]]'' · ''[[Contraception]]'' · ''[[Notable cases of medical negligence due to Christian beliefs]]''

|group9=Christianity and Education
|list9=''[[Teach the controversy]]'' · ''[[Abstinence-only sex education]]'' · ''[[Prayer in school]]'' · ''[[Religious universities]]'' · ''[[Theological studies]]'' · ''[[Comparative religion studies]]''

}}

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-08T06:41:47Z

Eyedunno:

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known outside of the Ancient Near East, supposedly lending credibility to a literal interpretation of such stories as the [[Noah's ark|worldwide flood of Noah]] and the confusion of man's languages at Babel.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in ''The Discovery of Genesis'' (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” [禁] is composed of the symbol for “two trees” [林] and “command” [示] and the symbol for “desire” [婪] consists of symbols for “two trees” [林] and “woman” [女].}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by creationists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the cases of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation.

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Creationist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that creationists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 ('earth', but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 ('mouth', but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which creationists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 'iron' is a shorthand version (used mainly in Japanese and, with slight modification, in Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵. It originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on the modern usage as shorthand for 'iron'. Creationist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and in so doing also makes a false cultural assumption about a relationship between the word for 'tongue' and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===Reference===
* DeFrancis, John. ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]]
[[Category:Bible]]

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-08T06:39:26Z

Eyedunno:

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known outside of the Ancient Near East, supposedly lending credibility to a literal interpretion of such stories as the [[Noah's ark|worldwide flood of Noah]] and the confusion of man's languages at Babel.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in ''The Discovery of Genesis'' (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” [禁] is composed of the symbol for “two trees” [林] and “command” [示] and the symbol for “desire” [婪] consists of symbols for “two trees” [林] and “woman” [女].}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by creationists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the cases of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation.

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Creationist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that creationists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 ('earth', but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 ('mouth', but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which creationists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 'iron' is a shorthand version (used mainly in Japanese and, with slight modification, in Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵. It originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on the modern usage as shorthand for 'iron'. Creationist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and in so doing also makes a false cultural assumption about a relationship between the word for 'tongue' and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===Reference===
* DeFrancis, John. ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]]
[[Category:Bible]]

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-08T03:34:12Z

Eyedunno:

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known outside of the Ancient Near East, lending credibility to a literal interpretion of such stories as the [[Noah's ark|worldwide flood of Noah]] and the confusion of man's languages at Babel.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in "The Discovery of Genesis" (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” [禁] is composed of the symbol for “two trees” [林] and “command” [示] and the symbol for “desire” [婪] consists of symbols for “two trees” [林] and “woman” [女].}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by creationists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the cases of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation.

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Creationist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that creationists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 ('earth', but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 ('mouth', but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which creationists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 'iron' is a shorthand version (used mainly in Japanese and, with slight modification, in Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵. It originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on the modern usage as shorthand for 'iron'. Creationist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and in so doing also makes a false cultural assumption about a link between the word for tongue and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===Reference===
* DeFrancis, John. "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy". Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]]
[[Category:Bible]]

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-08T02:11:20Z

Eyedunno:

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known throughout the world in ancient times.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in "The Discovery of Genesis" (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” [禁] is composed of the symbol for “two trees” [林] and “command” [示] and the symbol for “desire” [婪] consists of symbols for “two trees” [林] and “woman” [女].}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by creationists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the cases of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation.

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Creationist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that creationists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 ('earth', but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 ('mouth', but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which creationists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 'iron' is a shorthand version (used mainly in Japanese and, with slight modification, in Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵. It originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on the modern usage as shorthand for 'iron'. Creationist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and in so doing also makes a false cultural assumption about a link between the word for tongue and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===Reference===
* DeFrancis, John. "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy". Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]]
[[Category:Bible]]

Chinese characters and the Bible

2011-07-08T01:45:30Z

Eyedunno:

The idea that Chinese characters contain Biblical messages is used by [[creationism|creationists]] to support the assertion that [[Bible|Biblical]] stories, and especially those told in [[Genesis]], were known throughout the world in ancient times.

==Background information==
This argument was notably propounded by C.H. Kang and Ethel Nelson in "The Discovery of Genesis" (1979), and is currently employed by missionaries to China and by Western apologists.

==Argument==
One example of such claims, taken from [http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH14-4A.htm a Christian apologetics site], is as follows:
{{Quote|Genesis 2:8-9 relates that in the center of the Garden of Eden two special trees, the “tree of life” and the “tree of knowledge of good and evil” were present. So these two trees symbolize the Garden of Eden. Subsequently in Genesis 2:16-17 God forbids Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge. In the Chinese the symbol for “forbidden” [禁] is composed of the symbol for “two trees” [林] and “command” [示] and the symbol for “desire” [婪] consists of symbols for “two trees” [林] and “woman” [女].}}
{{Quote|The discovery of the Biblical roots of the Chinese pictorial characters points to a common bond between Chinese and Jewish people. This could well be explained by the accounts of the creation, the flood and the tower of Babel outlined in the first 11 chapters of Genesis.}}

==Counter arguments==
===Actual structure of Chinese characters===
While Chinese characters (like most human writing systems) are ultimately derived from pictograms, when they became used for writing, they ceased to be pictographic. Most characters used in both modern and classical Chinese writing have both phonetic (establishing sound) and signific (hinting at a semantic category) components. According to DeFrancis (1984), the vast majority of Chinese characters (83% in common use based on an analysis by Chen Heqin) are phonetic compounds of this type. For example, the character 媽, used to mean 'mother', is composed of the elements 女 'woman' and 馬 'horse'. While the component meaning 'woman' hints that the character has something to do with women, the component meaning 'horse' in fact establishes pronunciation - both the 'mother' and 'horse' morphemes are pronounced /ma/, albeit with different tones.

Most of the characters used by creationists in attempts to support an argument that Biblical stories were known to the ancient Chinese are of this type. In the cases of the two examples above, 林 actually hints at pronunciation.

===Susceptibility to confirmation bias===
The individual elements are often polysemous, and original meanings have been broadly extended over time. For instance, 口 can refer to mouths, numbers of people (as in how many mouths there are to feed), or even holes or caves. Creationist analyses add to this "breath" in order to support an assertion that 園 'garden' contains a reference to God breathing life into Adam. Similarly, 林 is indeed made up of two trees, but it generally refers to wooded areas and not literally to two trees. Furthermore, the characters themselves can have a range of meanings. "Can" in English may refer to a metal container, a toilet, buttocks, ability, putting a stop to something, and so on, and the tendency to have a range of associated meanings, or even completely unrelated meanings is also present in Chinese (for instance, the character 説 in literary Chinese may be pronounced /shuo/ and have the meaning of 'speech', or /shui/ with the meaning of 'persuasion', or /yue/ with the meaning of 'happiness').

Ultimately then, most of these examples seem to involve [[confirmation bias]] in which ambiguous evidence is made to fit presupposed conclusions about the Bible. With so many choices, it is no surprise that creationists can shoehorn the components of a character into a story that corresponds to some aspect of their theology. In fact, it is not difficult to associate the verse that inspired the name of the Iron Chariots Wiki with a Chinese character (also see additional note):

[[image:ChineseFe.png]]

Furthermore, some of these analyses are anachronistic, or simply wrong. 告 'tell/inform' is broken down into 土 ('earth', but glossed as the more creationism-friendly 'dust'), 口 ('mouth', but glossed as 'breath'), and a single brushstroke which creationists claim means 'life'. But in fact, older forms of the character clearly have 牛 'ox' as the upper portion.

===Standards of evidence===
Even if it were somehow demonstrated that Chinese characters are evidence of ancient Chinese knowledge of Bible stories, this would be no reason to accept supernatural claims found in the Bible. [[Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence]], and, for example, ancient transmission of these stories from the Near East to the Far East conflicts far less with the rest of the available evidence than the reality of a global flood or of many other claims made by creationists.

==Additional note==
The character 鉄 'iron' is a shorthand version (mainly in Japanese and Simplified Chinese orthographies) of 鐵. It originally meant something along the lines of 'to sew [cloth, etc.]' (when used as a verb) or 'rope' (when used as a noun), but it fell out of currency in these usages and took on the modern usage as shorthand for 'iron'. Creationist sources employ similar anachronisms - for instance, the character 乱 'confusion' is linked to 舌 'tongue' as a purported allusion to the Babel story in Genesis (and in so doing also makes a false cultural assumption about a link between the word for tongue and foreign languages), but its traditional form is in fact 亂.

==Links==
===External links===
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/388.asp Chinese Characters and Genesis] – These claims presented on the creationist site Answers in Genesis.
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTR7Q4_KGM Chinese Language and the Flood] - Argument by YouTube creationist NephilimFree
* [http://www.raccoonbend.com/languages/chinchar/chinchar.html Chinese Characters and Genesis] – A detailed skeptical analysis of many of the alleged connections between written Chinese and Genesis

===Reference===
* DeFrancis, John. "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy". Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1984.

[[Category:Arguments]]
[[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]]
[[Category:Bible]]

File:ChineseFe.png

2011-07-08T00:21:42Z

Eyedunno: Bogus analysis of the Chinese character for 'iron' linking it to Judges 1:19.

Bogus analysis of the Chinese character for 'iron' linking it to Judges 1:19.