She dodged all direct challenges by the atheist interviewer and appealed to her own expertise as casually as she blasts others for "their lack of research" without noting any other errors in their work. I also don't think that studies back up her belief that religious people know more about world religions or Western history. Then there's her sweeping claims about the historical merit of vanquishing barbarism with organized religion, as though democracy, agnosticism and reason were never suppressed as historical options for that business.Well, yes. That's what Paglia does. She's the only person I've ever read who constantly name-drops herself. At the end of the day, her ideas are interesting but her arguments have little force: they're all When I Was In Brazil In 1978, My Fellow-Travelers In The Transgendered Mariachi Whirlwind Anticipated Madonna's Ouvre With Their Coy Allusion To Militarized Innuendo, A Subject I Have Always Thought Received Too Little Attention After My Treatment Of It In...
How many states can a light switch be in?Four, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, if you carefully place it. A larger light switch makes the task comparatively easier.
hades, I suspect you and Joe are seeing this through different lenses.It's worth noting that the most objectionable flavors of Christianity in North America -- the dominionist "literalists" -- would have to concede hades' point.
Actually that statement about the devil quoting scripture? That comes straight from a New Testament passage where he does exactly that-to Jesus Himself.Well, yes. Presumably the Devil can quote that part, too. "Scripture and Scripture Alone" leads, inevitably, inescapably, to tribalism and hypocrisy: it can't acknowledge the existence of an interpretive framework, because that framework can't itself be weighed by Scripture. Eventually we arrive at Darbyism and everything gets silly. So everyone accuses each other of twisting and distorting scriptures, but they're using prooftext to prove themselves correct, which only proves they're really mendacious, and...
Forgot to add-that Scripture quoted out of context, or with perhaps a word or phrase left out, is what we are talking about in this passage, and from it we are taught that yes, just because someone quotes the Bible doesn't mean they are handling the scriptures correctly.
I'm confused. Which of us is the devil in this case? Is it me?Everyone is the devil. It's how group dynamics work.
Lot's righteousness, biblically, was probably positionally, if not always manifested in everything he did. He was a believer, in the OT sense.This is pretty much as clear a demonstration of the "interpretive framework" bit I mentioned as is possible. Thanks. :-)
Well, there is a reason many of us believe we need the assistance of the Holy Spirit in understanding the Book. ;-)Well, yeah. Saying, "You're wrong because the Holy Spirit says" is even easier than actual theology.
In ''The Camel, the Hare and the Hyrax,'' Rabbi Slifkin examined the difficult separation of animals into kosher and nonkosher, and discussed apparent exceptions and contradictions to the claims of Jewish law. (The aardvark and the rhinoceros, for example, meet one test for being kosher but not another.)Per Wikipedia:
And in ''The Science of Torah,'' he took a scientist's eye to the Torah. Evolution, he wrote, did not disprove God's existence and was consistent with Jewish thought. He suggested that the Big Bang theory paralleled the account of the universe's creation given by the medieval Spanish-Jewish sage Ramban. And Rabbi Slifkin wrote, to quote his own later paraphrase, that ''tree-ring chronology, ice layers and sediment layers in riverbeds all show clear proof to the naked eye that the world is much more than 5,765 years old.''
The latter statement was particularly galling to the rabbi's critics, who support a literal reading of Genesis that they say puts the earth's age at 5,765.
The rabbis who signed the letter denouncing Rabbi Slifkin are widely respected Torah authorities; one of them, Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, 91, is a leader of Israel's United Torah Judaism Party and one of the most respected scholars in Orthodox Ashkenazi Judaism. As a result, the letter has had repercussions far beyond the congregations of those who signed it. Rabbi Slifkin's publisher, Targum Press, and his distributor, Feldheim Publishers, have stopped carrying the books. Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox outreach organization, has removed most of his articles from its Web site.
Revered though they are, however, most of the rabbis signing the letter are not known as community leaders or public voices; only one of the Americans, for example, sits on the eight-member Council of Torah Sages at the head of Agudath Israel of America, an influential national Orthodox organization. Rather, they represent the most unworldly segment of the ultra-Orthodox community, in which learning is prized and contact with the secular world, including secular education, is shunned.
The letter against Rabbi Slifkin is not the only recent outburst against science among the ultra-Orthodox. Last November, during the annual conference of Agudath Israel, Rabbi Uren Reich, the dean of Yeshiva of Woodlake Village in New Jersey, said, ''These same scientists who tell you with such clarity what happened 65 million years ago -- ask them what the weather will be like in New York in two weeks' time.''
In 2005 about twenty prominent Haredi rabbis in Israel and the United States, including Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliashiv, Rabbi Dovid Feinstein, Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman, Rabbi Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg, Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach and others, put a ban on Slifkin's books, which in effect meant that Haredi Jews in communities that accepted the Rabbis' authority could neither purchase nor read Slifkin's writings without running afoul of a rabbinic dictate. The main reasons given for the ban were Slifkin's suggestions that the Sages of the Talmud were mistaken in certain scientific matters, and that the universe is in fact billions of years old. All of the condemning rabbis belong to the Lithuanian (non-Hasidic) stream of Haredi Judaism.Rabbi Shlomo Eliyahu Miller was also among the signatories.
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posted by Astro Zombie at 11:57 AM on December 18, 2010