The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Why Stupid People Think They Are Smart

[Ginger]

I like the ones where the hosts bring up the Bible's instructions for the care and feeding of your slaves, and the callers bend themselves into pretzels trying to claim that slavery wasn't actually slavery back in those days.

That seems easily rebutted to me. My answer would have to be that I don't own any slaves*, therefore I'm not in conflict with the Bible's instructions on how to treat my slaves.

* Although I did, once, briefly, own a proxy share in a slave. Many years ago, I used to have a friend who belonged to the Church of the Brethren. They have historically been deeply opposed to slavery, and I suppose still are. At any rate, they were in contact with a missionary group in the Sudan, where slavery was alive and well. His congregation was raising money to buy slaves (through the missionaries), and set them free. I chipped in, and became, at least for the brief period between purchase and manumission, part-owner of a slave. IIRC, they quit that a few months later, when it became obvious that the freed slaves were just being recaptured, so that they were effectively putting free money in the slavers' pockets.

[Magpie]

I listened to "The Atheist Experience" show today. A woman called in and said that atheists can't interpret the Bible correctly because they are not filled with the Holy Spirit. She went on to say that if people simply followed all the instructions that God has laid out in the Bible that they will go to heaven. The host asked her how many witches she had killed. Of course she had no idea what he was talking about despite her claim that she read her Bible all the time. She said God would never instruct people to do that. When the Bible passage was read to her she was completely dumbfounded and after much bobbing and weaving said that that was open to interpretation.

That always reminds me of the old joke. What is the difference between an atheist and a Christian? The atheist has read the Bible.

c.d.

I like the ones where the hosts bring up the Bible's instructions for the care and feeding of your slaves, and the callers bend themselves into pretzels trying to claim that slavery wasn't actually slavery back in those days.

[Mayerling]

Third Part (sorry)

The Old Testament we have today did not formalize until a meeting that occurred in the Second Century C.E. ("Common Era") or A.D. ("Anno Domine"). A large number of Rabbis decided which books should be used and which discarded. This is why the Jewish Bible or Old Testament varies between it's Jewish 39 books and the extra volumes that are added in such Christian editions as the "Jerusalem Bible". Those extra books can't be totally ignored by Jewish Scholars, who refer to them (Books like "Judith, "Bel and the Dragon", "The Books of the Maccabees") as "The Apochrapha"). Interestingly, just as the "Book of Esther" is used at Purim in a separate scroll called a "Megillah", a similar "Megillah" made from the First Book of the Macabees ws used for the Jewish holiday of "Chanukah" which is based on the Macabees revolt against the Syrian Greeks under King Antiochus Epiphanes. But the ones left out by the Jews did not seem to fit in well with the spirit of the chosen thirty nine volumes, though this is hard to credit totally, as a book like the Book of Job was included, and that does not paint a very attractive portrait of God in it.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Second Part

Scholars now say that much of the Old Testament is the work of many hands, not a few Prophets and Moses and David, and Solomon, etc. Even the books of the Prophets are suspect. Isaiah is not the work of the single Great Prophet but his work and those of two others who are called "Isaiah One" and "Isaiah Two". Grammatical structure and usage can show where one of the Isaiahs ends and another begins.

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Ok...but be that as it may.. there are a ton of TERRIBLE things in the bible that any sane person would not agree with... things like

Exodus 21: 7-8 " When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again"

or Peter 2:18 " Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all the respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel"

or Timothy 2:12 " I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent"

or this beauty from Samuel 15:3 " This is what the Lord almighty says...Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey"...

Now I know that none of us feel these are right.. but when someone says "if people simply followed all the instructions that God has laid out in the Bible that they will go to heaven." like the woman C.D referenced.. then they are saying the above is good.....and they must be called out on this...

yes there are some really wonderful moral message in the bible...but to state that EVERYTHING in it is good because it is Gods word... I am just glad that most Christians do not believe in, or even know about these things (passages like these are usually left out of sermons hahaha)

Steadmund Brand

Hi Steadmund,

This site is acting up again, and interrupted the complete message I was sending, so I am reducing it to two parts, so as to force the site to act properly and print what I want to say.

You forgot how the Bible also insists that the Sabbath is so holy (it is given a separate commandment in the Ten Commandments) that you cannot break it at all. So in either Exodus or Leviticus, some Jew is caught gathering firewood (or sticks) presumably to just keep warm, but on the 7th day, a mandatory day of rest. He's stoned to death because he worked a little to keep warm.

Also the Ark of the Covenant is considered so Holy it cannot be touched by human hand. When it is on a cart being returned to Jerusalem in David's time, the cart breaks and the driver tries to stop the Covenant from falling. The moment he touches the Ark, he drops dead. Apparently our benevolent Deity did not think trying to protect his Holy Ark merited approval, not killing the individual.

Jeff

[Steadmund Brand]

I was just amusing myself with idle pedantry, not really speaking to your point or anything. It's a recurring fault of mine. Sorry about that.

You're entirely correct about many Christians not knowing (or at least not understanding) what's in the Bible. Leaving aside questions of morality (which are, after all, very culturally dependent) I'd go so far as to say that anyone who argues the Bible to be both literal and factually inerrant (as most fundamentalists, at least in the US, do) is arguing from a position of ignorance.

Most fundamentalists, I think, read the Bible on a ritual basis, with little understanding of what they're reading. There's a reason, I think, why so many fundamentalist preachers insist that the King James version is the only Bible a proper Christian should read. If you can't follow Shakespeare without a crib sheet, then you can't really grasp the meaning of much of the KJV, and that leaves people dependent on their pastor to interpret for them. Some of these pastors are well-intentioned, but I strongly believe that the vast majority are mountebanks, motivated by the love of money, and the lust for popular acclaim, even if that adulation is found among the ignorant and deluded.

FWIW. if anyone's looking for a good, understandable Bible, I'd recommend the English Standard Version. It's written in plain, modern English, accessible to all. It isn't nearly so rhetorically satisfying as the KJV, of course, but that very plainness lends itself to understanding.

Also, FWIW, if you're motivated to become a better person, but for whatever reason find the Bible off-putting (and one could hardly be blamed, all things considered), you can get many of the same lessons from "My Little Pony".

Thank you Ginger!!!

That is far and away the best reply I have EVER gotten for those arguments!

Steadmund Brand

[Ginger]

As an addendum, I'd also argue that if you're trying to understand people and events of the Victorian era, you really do need some degree of familiarity with the Bible.

[c.d.]

Well here is a video that upset Christians big time but all the person did was quote the Bible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StpKCZYHeUA

c.d.

[Ginger]

I was just amusing myself with idle pedantry, not really speaking to your point or anything. It's a recurring fault of mine. Sorry about that.

You're entirely correct about many Christians not knowing (or at least not understanding) what's in the Bible. Leaving aside questions of morality (which are, after all, very culturally dependent) I'd go so far as to say that anyone who argues the Bible to be both literal and factually inerrant (as most fundamentalists, at least in the US, do) is arguing from a position of ignorance.

Most fundamentalists, I think, read the Bible on a ritual basis, with little understanding of what they're reading. There's a reason, I think, why so many fundamentalist preachers insist that the King James version is the only Bible a proper Christian should read. If you can't follow Shakespeare without a crib sheet, then you can't really grasp the meaning of much of the KJV, and that leaves people dependent on their pastor to interpret for them. Some of these pastors are well-intentioned, but I strongly believe that the vast majority are mountebanks, motivated by the love of money, and the lust for popular acclaim, even if that adulation is found among the ignorant and deluded.

FWIW. if anyone's looking for a good, understandable Bible, I'd recommend the English Standard Version. It's written in plain, modern English, accessible to all. It isn't nearly so rhetorically satisfying as the KJV, of course, but that very plainness lends itself to understanding.

Also, FWIW, if you're motivated to become a better person, but for whatever reason find the Bible off-putting (and one could hardly be blamed, all things considered), you can get many of the same lessons from "My Little Pony".

[Steadmund Brand]

I believe that the majority opinion among biblical scholars currently is that "poisoner" would be a better translation than "witch". James I & VI was, for whatever reason, utterly obsessed with witches.

Ok...but be that as it may.. there are a ton of TERRIBLE things in the bible that any sane person would not agree with... things like

Exodus 21: 7-8 " When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again"

or Peter 2:18 " Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all the respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the cruel"

or Timothy 2:12 " I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent"

or this beauty from Samuel 15:3 " This is what the Lord almighty says...Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey"...

Now I know that none of us feel these are right.. but when someone says "if people simply followed all the instructions that God has laid out in the Bible that they will go to heaven." like the woman C.D referenced.. then they are saying the above is good.....and they must be called out on this...

yes there are some really wonderful moral message in the bible...but to state that EVERYTHING in it is good because it is Gods word... I am just glad that most Christians do not believe in, or even know about these things (passages like these are usually left out of sermons hahaha)

Steadmund Brand

[Svensson]

T...like that famous Kirk Cameron video claiming the banana is the proof of god....how the shape is made for our hands blah blah blah..

yes, I watched that video. It's wrong on so many levels.

Gotta be seen to be believed....

[Ginger]

I believe that the majority opinion among biblical scholars currently is that "poisoner" would be a better translation than "witch". James I & VI was, for whatever reason, utterly obsessed with witches.

[c.d.]

I listened to "The Atheist Experience" show today. A woman called in and said that atheists can't interpret the Bible correctly because they are not filled with the Holy Spirit. She went on to say that if people simply followed all the instructions that God has laid out in the Bible that they will go to heaven. The host asked her how many witches she had killed. Of course she had no idea what he was talking about despite her claim that she read her Bible all the time. She said God would never instruct people to do that. When the Bible passage was read to her she was completely dumbfounded and after much bobbing and weaving said that that was open to interpretation.

That always reminds me of the old joke. What is the difference between an atheist and a Christian? The atheist has read the Bible.

c.d.

[martin wilson]

Monkeys are not unevolved humans. They are fully evolved monkeys.
Like great white sharks, giraffes, ardvaarks, and anything else that exists. They have evolved to survive in their environment and pass on their genes.
Assuming someone starts at about age four in nursery and leaves school at 16, it requires twelve years to change their minds as they obviously weren't paying attention the first time around.
Who's got the time?

[Steadmund Brand]

The religious types are far and away the worst offenders...because they only hear what they want to hear....like that famous Kirk Cameron video claiming the banana is the proof of god....how the shape is made for our hands blah blah blah.. and the fact that the" modern banana" is actually MAN MADE THRU HUMAN CULTIVATION!!!! yet no matter how many times this is pointed out and explained... they still go back to the "God made the banana perfect for humans" as though the explanation was never given.. it's very selective hearing... I have actually had this argument in person and it ended with the person saying.." well we just have to agree we have different theories on this" and I said NO WE DO NOT!!!! I HAVE FACTS AND PROOF AND HAVE SHOWN YOU THIS AND YOUR COUNTER ARGUMENTS IS " NO IT'S NOT" LIKE IT"S A FRIGGIN MONTY PYTHON SKETCH ... that is not "different theories" that is willing ignorance on their part... now that pisses me off!!! that is NOT faith... that is absolute intentional ignorance...and they think they have the right to teach this garbage along side science.....

Again.. Sorry... this is something I really have strong feelings about, as you can see,

Steadmund Brand