Why Do the Religious Reject Science While Embracing the Impossible?

[Age]

Not much with exegesis or theology, however. That much, I can tell. And I've never run into a single credible theologian who would take your interpretation of the Wedding in Cana. It's the first time I've ever seen something so completely speculative and unrelated to the text drawn out of it. So it must come from anthropology, because no other department of academia would be nutty enough to suggest it.

I read this interpretation once (I forget where). Jesus turning water into wine is the rapid version of the miracle God performs whenever wine is made. The water nourishes the grapes, which ripen and then ferment, turning into wine. Jesus just did it quicker.

Classic.

And what IS MORE CLASSIC is BELIEVING, ABSOLUTELY, that the WHOLE Universe, Itself, was created by A 'male', once upon a time.

Which is some thing that you can NOT EVEN EXPLAIN. Do you WONDER WHY you GET LAUGHED AT SO MUCH, here, "immanuel can"?

[Age]

Classic.

I will suggest that "immanuel can" LOOKS AT the actual thread title, here.

Which could also be worded,

Why do those who EMBRACE BELIEFS like; The WHOLE Universe was Created, once upon a time, by A 'male', (which is OBVIOUSLY BOTH physically and logically ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE,) while ALSO REJECTING the ACTUAL PROOF OPPOSING that CLAIM, and BELIEF?

Are you ABLE TO JUST ANSWER this VERY SIMPLE CLARIFYING QUESTION, here, "immanuel can"?

If no, then WHY NOT?

What IS ACTUALLY Wrong with you?

[Atla]

"Evolutionism would proceed by sexual reproduction"

It's one thing to be ignorant, another thing to be proud of it.

I agree. So, since you think Evolutionism doesn't require sexual reproduction, how does it work?

You explain, so you show us all you're not "ignorant." We'll wait.

Exactly. In the time you typed this comment, you could have googled it or asked an AI, and they would have listed 3-4 alternatives to sexual reproduction. You could have read up on it years ago. But those who take pride in their willful ignorance..

[Dubious]

Yes, I understand you fully.

You understand nothing and accept nothing except what's contained in that cow patch of absurdities called the bible. Since you believe it to be inviolable and bullet-proof why look further! If you truly wanted to know, you have as much access to information as anyone else.

But what is the TRUE story, according to you?

There is no TRUE story according to me. It's either true or it ain't true, whether I accord with it or not. I may believe something to be true without granitizing it into a fact. In this instance, the entire planet is a witness to the evolutionary process. There remains nothing to disprove it.

Since there was, according to you, no "first mating couple," what was there, in its place? What do you believe instead of that?
It can't be Evolutionism, because Evolutionism would proceed by sexual reproduction. And therefore, there WOULD have to be some "first mating couple," even if you didn't know what their names were. But you insist there was none. You say "all such depictions" are false. So whatever brand of Evolutionism you say you believe in, this would guarantee that it was not based on sexual reproduction.
So how did it operate? By mitosis?

This is so monolithically ignorant it's almost beyond description! It was evolution that led to sexual reproduction making it more complex than it originally was when eukaryotic organisms (cells with a nucleus) first exchanged DNA approximately one billion years ago, eons before there was any chance of hominids appearing. If you want to call these lusty eukaryotic cells the original mating pair, that wouldn't be far off. Binary fission, in contrast, refers primarily to asexual reproduction based on simple cell division - if one can call the process simple. Genetic variations by that method was extremely limited.

The asexual eventually became sexual by random mutations, i.e., through evolution as a way to duplicate and distribute the chromosome content of cells. Mitosis was the process for doing that without which nothing organic can exist, including plants and trees, etc. Everything that ever lived, flora or fauna, is cell based without exception whether they be eukaryotic or prokaryotic cell structures.

But what's the use! You're going to insist on an original mating pair because without the Adam & Eve story as the beginning most of the bible would turn to pure flatulence...except if interpreted as a saga of the Jewish people attempting to build a nation which identifies them as a group distinct from the others which surrounded them.

You would already know all this if you really wanted to. It doesn't take a long read to get the gist of it but it's clear that you want to keep the purity of your religious beliefs unpolluted by any fact making you a write-off, a hack and a throwback.

[Belinda]

Yes, I understand you fully.

You understand nothing and accept nothing except what's contained in that cow patch of absurdities called the bible. Since you believe it to be inviolable and bullet-proof why look further! If you truly wanted to know, you have as much access to information as anyone else.

But what is the TRUE story, according to you?

There is no TRUE story according to me. It's either true or it ain't true, whether I accord with it or not. I may believe something to be true without granitizing it into a fact. In this instance, the entire planet is a witness to the evolutionary process. There remains nothing to disprove it.

Since there was, according to you, no "first mating couple," what was there, in its place? What do you believe instead of that?
It can't be Evolutionism, because Evolutionism would proceed by sexual reproduction. And therefore, there WOULD have to be some "first mating couple," even if you didn't know what their names were. But you insist there was none. You say "all such depictions" are false. So whatever brand of Evolutionism you say you believe in, this would guarantee that it was not based on sexual reproduction.
So how did it operate? By mitosis?

This is so monolithically ignorant it's almost beyond description! It was evolution that led to sexual reproduction making it more complex than it originally was when eukaryotic organisms (cells with a nucleus) first exchanged DNA approximately one billion years ago, eons before there was any chance of hominids appearing. If you want to call these lusty eukaryotic cells the original mating pair, that wouldn't be far off. Binary fission, in contrast, refers primarily to asexual reproduction based on simple cell division - if one can call the process simple. Genetic variations by that method was extremely limited.

The asexual eventually became sexual by random mutations, i.e., through evolution as a way to duplicate and distribute the chromosome content of cells. Mitosis was the process for doing that without which nothing organic can exist, including plants and trees, etc. Everything that ever lived, flora or fauna, is cell based without exception whether they be eukaryotic or prokaryotic cell structures.

But what's the use! You're going to insist on an original mating pair because without the Adam & Eve story as the beginning most of the bible would turn to pure flatulence...except if interpreted as a saga of the Jewish people attempting to build a nation which identifies them as a group distinct from the others which surrounded them.

You would already know all this if you really wanted to. It doesn't take a long read to get the gist of it but it's clear that you want to keep the purity of your religious beliefs unpolluted by any fact making you a write-off, a hack and a throwback.

I agree , except that the books that comprise The Bible can stand alone as good reads. Taken as a whole, The Bible is a history of love and the development of love.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Unfortunately, when Immanuel jumps back into his own Evangelical fervor, and presents to the Forum his topical and superficial interpretation of Scripture, it throws the entire forum into a hissyfit. Simply put, no one today, except one with a fanatical mind that is capable of forcing itself to *see* and believe what cannot be believed and what is impossible to believe, can agree that the Adam & Eve story is actual history.

But here is the oddest of all odd things: Immanuel who is capable of clear-headed exposition on many topical themes, who shows he has a rationally-oriented mind and a large degree of background on many contemporary topics (and forgive me here Immanuel), when he waxes fanatical he transforms himself into a fanatical religious zealot when he tries to convince others that his Bible realism should be taken seriously, and naturally (and rightly) this provokes the Standard Reactions. Dubious jumps back in and repeats all over again what has been said a hundred times already. In this Dubious shows where his *delight* is found: going round and round in circles in an epic battle against Bible Realism.

Let’s face it: on the whole this type of Bible-grounded Evangelism is an American thing. I think this is a solid fact. Over the least 40-50 years an entire zealous American Evangelical establishment has evangelized the entire world with this particular literalist interpretation of the Bible and especially Bible prophecy.

A few things must be said here. One is that if we are not aware of what the religious Right is thinking and *seeing*, and if one is not aware that the religious Zionist Right (I mean the Jewish and Israeli radicals who have gained substantial control over the Israeli state) are not attempting to direct events in specific ways, if one remains outside of this comprehension one cannot, in my view, understand at all well what is going on today. I will certainly bring into this the election of Donald Trump and make reference to the extreme zealotry of many now forming his cabinet.

So here is the thing I really want to bring to your attention though I suppose it will be misinterpreted. We have to see and we have to accept that according to a predominant perceptual stance that is held in the minds and in the psychic structure of powerful figures, that we are (and I will resort to their symbols and their terms) in a time of the advent of the Anti-Christ. I do not actually have to *believe in* an Anti-Christ as a real figure who appears on the world-stage, I only need refer to what they are thinking, imagining, longing for and importantly constructing as they project deeply symbolic material onto the world and the world’s events.

To the degree that one is *captured* by Christian symbols and interprets them through Bible realism, is the degree to which one deviates from the *real meaning* within the symbols. I know, that is a weird thing to say. Traditional Christianity, taken at the level of symbolism, has many sound elements because what is connoted by the general Christian picture is sound because the metaphysics described in the symbols are sound. And it is when one can see and understand intellectually what the metaphysical ideas actually are (and why they are important) that one can sift out in other traditions and religious stories what is also metaphysically valid as well as *true*. The principles are metaphysical principles and they are apprehended on the intellectual plane. Belinda says it is about *love* but that is a mushy picture. It is (IMO) actually about a very concrete and very serious set of intellectual precepts that are at the base of (permit me) *genuine metaphysics*.

Immanuel, as a true Evangelical zealot! must always bust forth and declare from time to time: “You are all going to Hell unless you bend a knee before Jesus and declare your allegiance!” Similarly, today, and appearing on TV and even interwoven in the rehearsals around the installation of the new President, is all this fervent religious-Christian Evangelical content. They are trying to *awaken* the nation, and possibly the world, to the need to return to Christian religious roots, but they are definitely unaware that on the level of metaphysical principles what they hope for (a neoconservative, market-grounded, tech administered, AI infused, militarism and neo-Imperialism infused national ideology, might have some initial successes, but in the end it will bring the nation, and then the world, toward that disaster which all feel is imminent.

What I have taken away from these conversation — and specifically I refer to Big Mike who began this and a series of threads with very specific intentions in mind and attempting to bring out extremely specific views that he attempts to *sell* — is just how utterly confused (and here please forgive me!) all of you really are. You-plural always end up as gibbering incoherent idiots, bickering over what is utterly inane.

No matter what, you cannot seem to arrive at any level of clarity. So all that you have is some tendentious position that you have carved out for yourself, to which you are zealously wedded, but which is absolutely idiosyncratic just to you! No one agrees with you. You are *lone voices* crying in a wilderness of subjective impression. In this sense there is no *metaphysical understanding* and because there is no metaphysical agreement possible, all the ideas are just jumbles underpinned by unsettled and overheated emotions.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You understand nothing and accept nothing except what's contained in that cow patch of absurdities called the bible. Since you believe it to be inviolable and bullet-proof why look further! If you truly wanted to know, you have as much access to information as anyone else.

You fail to understand: Immanuel Can has had established in him, and has worked to establish in himself, a doctrine and an interpretation of that doctrine which leaves him no alternative but the Bible realism that he relies on. It is funny (actually it is hilarious) that he turns to the Original Mating Pair story. You must understand: He really believes this is the necessary way to hold to the coherence of the picture!

You are asking him (actually you are demanding) that he turn against one of those *pillars* that uphold his entire grounding within a literal Christian interpretation and Bible literalism. And you fail to recognize that he cannot do this!

You are asking him to subvert the foundations of the truth that he has lived in and through for half a century.

So in this sense (it seems clear) to embrace the impossible is a survival tactic, is it not? Because just one confession that just one story is not *true* in a literalist sense will lead, dangerously, to the collapse of an entire Literalist Monument. That is simply too much to ask for.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Gary, Big Mike, Age — all of you! — I am here for you as Systems of Interpretation collapse! The Hyperborean Apollo will leave no one behind!

Mike: get down on thy knees and PRAY to the Acausal Connecting Principle!

Gary: toss away those anti-psychotics!

Age: keep your main digit off the caps-lock button!

It is all gonna be ok …

[Immanuel Can]

"Evolutionism would proceed by sexual reproduction"

It's one thing to be ignorant, another thing to be proud of it.

I agree. So, since you think Evolutionism doesn't require sexual reproduction, how does it work?

You explain, so you show us all you're not "ignorant." We'll wait.

n the time you typed this comment, you could have googled it or asked an AI, and they would have listed 3-4 alternatives to sexual reproduction.

In fact, I gave you one: mitosis -- asexual reproduction. But even you must be able to see how unworkable that suggestion is. That's why you're avoiding the task...you can't do it. Nobody can. Even AI can't.

So your derision of the idea of a first mating couple was made out of pure ignorance. You don't have any alternate narrative in mind, and can't even invent one. And that's about the least scientific a person can be. You don't even have a theory...your view doesn't even rise to the level of even being wrong. It's nothing at all.

[Immanuel Can]

There is no TRUE story according to me.

So the human race appeared magically on earth...and NOTHING did it! Nothing is true. Wow.

...the entire planet is a witness to the evolutionary process...

But evolution requires sexual reproduction. And you say that all such stories are false. So now, give us your "real" story. Except you can't. You don't believe ANYTHING is true, you say. So you're no Evolutionist. You're a believer in magic.

It was evolution that led to sexual reproduction...

If that is so, then there was an original mating pair. As soon as sexual reproduction came into play, that's necessary. The deduction is inescapable, unless you can invent some story that proceeds without any such possibility.

All the abuse you squirt out is simply designed to conceal your failure. You can't do it. Nobody can. And the reason is that you're wrong.

[Atla]

I agree. So, since you think Evolutionism doesn't require sexual reproduction, how does it work?

You explain, so you show us all you're not "ignorant." We'll wait.

n the time you typed this comment, you could have googled it or asked an AI, and they would have listed 3-4 alternatives to sexual reproduction.

In fact, I gave you one: mitosis -- asexual reproduction. But even you must be able to see how unworkable that suggestion is. That's why you're avoiding the task...you can't do it. Nobody can. Even AI can't.

So your derision of the idea of a first mating couple was made out of pure ignorance. You don't have any alternate narrative in mind, and can't even invent one. And that's about the least scientific a person can be. You don't even have a theory...your view doesn't even rise to the level of even being wrong. It's nothing at all.

No idea what you're on about. The current theory is that sex appeared about 1.5 billion years ago, in single-celled organisms. Before that there was only asexual reproduction.

[Immanuel Can]

n the time you typed this comment, you could have googled it or asked an AI, and they would have listed 3-4 alternatives to sexual reproduction.

In fact, I gave you one: mitosis -- asexual reproduction. But even you must be able to see how unworkable that suggestion is. That's why you're avoiding the task...you can't do it. Nobody can. Even AI can't.

So your derision of the idea of a first mating couple was made out of pure ignorance. You don't have any alternate narrative in mind, and can't even invent one. And that's about the least scientific a person can be. You don't even have a theory...your view doesn't even rise to the level of even being wrong. It's nothing at all.

No idea what you're on about. The current theory is that sex appeared about 1.5 billion years ago, in single-celled organisms....Before that there was only asexual reproduction.

Think harder, I guess. At some point, there had to be a first fully-human pair. You can set that bar anyplace, and it's the case: at post-Neanderthals, or earlier. There's no question that, at that point, and by that stage, reproduction among humans was by sex, not mitosis. So there had to be a first mating pair of what we now call 'modern' humans, in the biological sense. There's no other way it could be, whether you believe in Evolutionism or something else. And that will remain true no matter how many stages we imagine there were before post-Neanderthals.

Anybody who says it was otherwise, that 'modern' humans had a way of reproducing that does not imply an original mating pair owes us an explanation of what that "otherwise" would be. How would that story go? If they have one, it would be worth our seeing it.

If they don't have one...well, then we know they were bluffing all along.

[Dubious]

So the human race appeared magically on earth...and NOTHING did it! Nothing is true. Wow.

The human race appearing magically on earth is the Adam & Eve story in which there were no precursors, no ancestry, no development of any kind, just a simple let there be by the Commander in Chief of the universe.

Wow, Wow. Wow. ...I'm just trying to follow your lead here.

[Atla]

In fact, I gave you one: mitosis -- asexual reproduction. But even you must be able to see how unworkable that suggestion is. That's why you're avoiding the task...you can't do it. Nobody can. Even AI can't.

So your derision of the idea of a first mating couple was made out of pure ignorance. You don't have any alternate narrative in mind, and can't even invent one. And that's about the least scientific a person can be. You don't even have a theory...your view doesn't even rise to the level of even being wrong. It's nothing at all.

No idea what you're on about. The current theory is that sex appeared about 1.5 billion years ago, in single-celled organisms....Before that there was only asexual reproduction.

Think harder, I guess. At some point, there had to be a first fully-human pair. You can set that bar anyplace, and it's the case: at post-Neanderthals, or earlier. There's no question that, at that point, and by that stage, reproduction among humans was by sex, not mitosis. So there had to be a first mating pair of what we now call 'modern' humans, in the biological sense. There's no other way it could be, whether you believe in Evolutionism or something else. And that will remain true no matter how many stages we imagine there were before post-Neanderthals.

Anybody who says it was otherwise, that 'modern' humans had a way of reproducing that does not imply an original mating pair owes us an explanation of what that "otherwise" would be. How would that story go? If they have one, it would be worth our seeing it.

If they don't have one...well, then we know they were bluffing all along.

Sorry I thought by evolution you meant evolution, not human evolution.

Wherever you draw the line, the offspring was the first fully-human, not the parents. Sexual reproduction and some mutation combined.

[Immanuel Can]

So the human race appeared magically on earth...and NOTHING did it! Nothing is true. Wow.

The human race appearing magically on earth is the Adam & Eve story...

Hey, I'm open to your alternate story. I just can't see what it would be. And you, apparently, can't tell us.

Spell it out, if you can: how would it go?

Let's start with the protozoa in the primordial slime...how does it become a human being without implicating any stage at which sexual reproduction is involved? Tell the story.