September 12, 2009, 8:24 am by dc-agape.

Genesis 33

As Jacob meets his brother he continues to treat Esau as a “lord” throughout this chapter.  Jacob goes so far as to bow before his brother seven times, a sign of complete submission.  But to say the least, the “gifts” to Esau were unnecessary.  Esau had already forgiven Jacob long before the “gifts”.  Esau brought the 400 men to help, not to harm, his brother.  Esau was as rich and powerful as Jacob.  This is easy to see, because if he could meet Jacob with 400 men, imagine how many men he had back in Seir!  The entire account of Esau, recorded in the Word, will be covered in Genesis chapter 36. 

Esau immediately receives Jacob with open arms.  If only Esau knew what would happen between the Israelites and Esau’s offspring the Edomites.  Even though YHWH tells the Israelites to leave the Edomites alone, there are many battles between the descendants of these two brothers even to this today!  Only in 1994 did the nations of Jordan (where Seir is located) and Israel sign a peace treaty. 

Esau believing that everything is settled between himself and Jacob refuses the “gifts”.  Jacob continues to push the livestock on Esau until Esau accepts.  Esau offers to help protect Jacob’s family and livestock, but Jacob declines the offer, claiming that his children and livestock require a slower pace.  Esau even offers to leave only a small number of men, but Jacob does not trust even this little amount of help from his own brother.  In the end they separate and Jacob promises to head to Seir.  But this is a complete lie!  Jacob could not tell the truth if he had to, he is a complete liar.

Instead, Jacob continues on towards Shechem.  He returns to Canaan, but he does not honor the conditional prayer that he made to YHWH 20 years earlier.  So he even lies to YHWH.  Man, what a total loser Jacob is!  Jacob buys a plot of land for his tents and an alter in Shechem.  He pays 100 pieces of silver.  The smallest piece of silver in the previous link is 30g.   That would be about 3 kilograms of silver.  Using a different relationship, the very minimum that Jacob paid was 300 grams of silver.  In comparison, Abraham bought a field and grave from Ephron the Hittite for about 4.5 kilograms.  Even our US 50 cent silver half-dollar weighs 12.5 grams (100 shekels would be 1.25 kilograms).  Since we cannot be certain about the true weight of the shekel, nor the size of either Abraham’s or Jacob’s plot of land, it would be good bet that both men paid about the same relative value for the land they possessed.

From a gay atheist point of view, I interpret the character of Jacob as both fearful of men and a liar.  Neither quality is something I want to use as guide on how to live my life.  As a result, the Word of God does not present a “Manual for Life”.

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September 12, 2009, 7:09 am by dc-agape.

A while back I ask some tough questions to one of my Christian commenters.  I had a reason for each of the questions.  You see, Christians worship a supreme being that is known for compassion, justice, and love.  In this post I wanted to hopefully finish the answer to teaching Creationism in the Classroom.  The purpose of the questions was to determine if our commenter was True to the Christ-like qualities expected from Christians.

I then asked if he believed that Creationism should be taught in the science classroom.  I requested his response to the recent trial in Dover, PA, USA.  It is true that as an Ethical Humanist (materialist) and a scientist I do have two biases.  One I have described many times…I do not see any proof of an existence of supernatural beings.  But being a scientist reinforces this bias by requiring data that supports any hypothesis, requires critical analysis of all data, and also requires that overlapping schools of thought (methods of gathering data) support each other.  As a scientist I believe that the skills of critical analysis are crucial to the solving of problems; either in the home, work, politics, environmental or international.

You see Creationism focuses mistakenly on evolution and biology as its target.  But at the same time Young Earth Creationists (most creationists) must also deny much if not all of Chemistry, Physics, Geology, and Astronomy.  These people believe that Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution is the cornerstone of all modern sciences.  They also believe that if they can topple this one theory then all the other sciences will fall as well.  But this is a very large mistake on their part.

Geology

Two people of geological significance need to be introduced.  Mary Anning has been called “the greatest fossilist the world has ever known.  She began to get this name in 1809-1811 at the age of about 10!  She is the girl that discovered many fossils of ichthyosaurus and one plesiosaurus.  It was well known long before Charles Darwin, that dead animals were trapped in stone formations.  But since those discoveries are too close to “evolution” one more person needs to be introduced: William Smith.  William “Strata” Smith proved that the earth had not always looked like it does today or in his own time (1799).  He is known as the “father of English geology” because of his documentation of the stratification of rock formation beginning in the area of Bath, England and ending with an entire geological map of England.

What must be understood is that Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is not the origin of modern scientific thinking.  Well before Darwin’s work was even started, the scientific community was well aware that something was wrong with the creation story taught to all scientists as the “Truth”.  Both the discovery of fossils (rock formations that look identical to animal bones) and uplifted breaks in the strata of the earth were known prior to the beginning of Evolution. 

If Creationists want to discredit Darwin’s work they must start at an earlier period of time than 1859.  Geology was well established as indicating that the Earth was not 5,800 years old (now days – 150 years later – 5,950 years old). 

Astronomy

We all know about Nicholas Copernicus (1473 – 1543), Galilei Galileo (1564 – 1642), and Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630).  These three men changed the world!  Prior to Copernicus’s time the Church taught that the Earth was the center of the universe.  But by the time Kepler died things were rapidly changing; the Earth was no longer the center of the universe.  One of man’s greatest ego trips – homocentricity – was nearly completely smashed by these three men.  Astronomy has been, ever since, slowly chipping away at the human ego.  We now know that suns exist that cannot be seen by the naked eye.  But even the Andromeda Galaxy is visible to the naked eye – an astonishing 2,300,000 light-years away.  That means that the light from this galaxy has been traveling for 2.3 million years to reach earth!  There goes the hypothesis of a 6,000 year old universe.

If Creationist want to make any headway into modern science they will have to make hypothesizes, test, and prove that the equipment used by astronomy are completely wrong about the size of the universe.  All I can say is go for it!  While you are at it, try and disprove the existence of well over 370 exo-planets discovered.  But the techniques used to prove distant stars and exo-planets are all linked to physics.  I will have to leave that to one additional post.

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