September 19, 2009, 10:22 am by dc-agape.

Genesis Chapter 34

This is a chapter about Dinah the daughter of Leah and Jacob.  Here again is a chapter where the Patriarchs of Israel do not have faith in YHWH and do not call upon his name.  The story starts out serine enough.  Dinah goes out among the women of Canaan (the descendants of Ham). 

While out with the girls, the son of a powerful man violates her.  Shechem was the name of the man that loved Dinah: 

^{Gen 34:3} His heart was drawn to Dinah daughter of Jacob, and he loved the girl and he spoke tenderly to her.

This might be very similar to date rape today or it could have been consensual.  As despicable as the act was, he was willing to do anything, pay any price for marriage to Dinah.  He wanted to correct his mistake!  How many men today will do that without a father’s shotgun?  Shechem’s father, Hamor, goes to Jacob to make the arrangements.

Jacob’s sons are filled with rage and flat out lie to Shechem and Hamor.  They demand genital mutilation before they will give consent to the marriage.  Shechem is so in love with Dinah that he and his father agree.  Even more they talk the all the men of the city into mutilating each individual’s genital.  The entire city is willing to take such a drastic action.  It might be true that they are thinking of their offspring with the sons of Israel, but is this not proof that they are willing to make a covenant with YHWH in the process?  Today, would an entire town mutilate their genitals just so one man could marry?  Jacob had 11 sons that needed wives; he has little choice about where those wives will come from.

The men of the city of Shechem followed through with the mutilation as required.  But instead of allowing Shechem to marry Dinah, Simeon and Levi attack the city!  They kill all the men, before the men recover from the genital mutilation.  To make things worse, they take all the possessions of the city, including the flocks, herds, and donkeys.  But they are not finished yet…no they take the women and children as well!

Let’s count the sins that were committed in this story.  The non-Israelite violates Dinah; we are not sure if this is rape, or if it is consensual.  The son’s of Israel on the other hand commit at least 5 sins.  First they have committed the sin of taking the place of YHWH as judge, truly arrogant.  Second, they have not called upon the name of YHWH during this episode; this was an act of man.  They bore false witness to the men of the town of Shechem.  They then murdered the men of the city, every single one, even the innocent ones!  Finally, they stole everything of value from the men they murdered without YHWH command.  Our society today would add one more sin to the list, even though it is not one of YHWH’s.  The women and children of Shechem are now slaves to the sons of Israel.  The women and children of Shechem have been denied freewill, and will be forced to either do manual labor or marry the sons of Israel!

To say the least, Jacob is troubled by the actions of Simeon and Levi.  He is worried that all of Canaan will turn against him and his family…for good reason!  All the sons can say is:

^{Gen 34:31} But they replied, “Should be have treated our sister like a prostitute?”

I sure am glad that we act a little more civilized today when premarital sex occurs!  Can you imagine the bloodshed if we acted in such a way today?

Posted in YHWH & slavery, Family Values?, Genesis, Readings | Print | 5 Comments »

September 19, 2009, 9:29 am by dc-agape.

A while back I ask some tough questions to one of my Christian commenters.  During these questions, posts, and comments one question was raised that should be addressed in a final post in this series.  If something as basic as the speed of light has changed in recent history (last 1,000,000,000 years) how does this change effect science?

First of all, let us look at the concept that the universe is very old.  Estimates are that the universe is 13,700,000,000 years old.  Even if variations have occurred in this period of time we are talking about only 10/137% (7.2%) of the age of the universe.  But of course, the concept that determines the age of the universe is based on a constant speed of light.  Getting into the nitty-gritty of the calculations for the age of the universe is quite cumbersome.  For this reason Wikipedia is most helpful.  Age of the Universe is one topic, within this topic is the Lambda-CDM concordance model, within this model are the parameters of the Hubble constant, Baryon Density, total matter density, optical depth to reionization, scalar fluctuation amplitude, and the scalar spectral index.  Only the Hubble constant itself is calculated from the speed of light.  The baryon density has been calculated to a highly accurate value.  The optical depth of reionization is also been constrained to a very small variation.  The total matter density of the universe is actually related to the baryon density by the SZ (Sunyaev-Zel’dovich) effect measurement.  The scalar fluctuation amplitude is actually measured directly from the Cosmic Background Radiation.  And finally the scalar spectral index is measured from WMAP and is becoming more accurate each year.

So actually the speed of light is rather immaterial to the outcome of these calculations.  It is actually the cosmic background radiation that is critical to the calculation of the age of the universe.  I have used Wikipedia as much as possible in this post due to the fact that it is written in layman’s terms.  The whole process is still very complex and relies on numerous measurements, each with errors and some with approximations.  But in general, when numerous methods converge on the same results/predictions, we are not using the Argument from Authority (as Christians use YHWH), but instead scientist are using completely different methods that can then be used together to determine the validly of the model.  If, for example the results of these different measurements did not relate to other measurements – such as the distance of the furthest supernovas – then one of the two models would be wrong.  Instead, both models agree! 

But this is how science works.  We do not take just one measurement, we do not use just one method, and we continually look for new information that either supports or eliminates old (outdated) methods.  Religion does not do this.  Religion claims to be based on documents written by man between 2000 – 3000 years ago.  Religion also claims that the source of these documents does not change.  Yet there is no way to test this hypothesis!  Worse, the documents used have been edited, mistranslated, lost, and subject to political strife during these last few millennium – making them highly suspect.  To make matters worse, there are competing religions that instead of making one religion stronger (more valid), they each contradict each other.  In scientific terms this would indicate that the religious model was incomplete or even completely wrong. 

Teaching of Creationism in the classrooms of science would be a very terrible travesty to the USA.  The fundamentals of science are based on repetitive measurements, agreement amongst measurements, and the critical skills to recognize the errors involved.  It is true that all science stands on the shoulders of previous methodology and as a result of previous work of humans with great knowledge.  But without this, we would not have computers, we would not have electrical lights, and we would not have automobiles.  We would also not have landed on the Moon, nearly eradicated polio, or built skyscrapers that religious fanatics could destroy with the airplanes that science built.  If you do not want to trust science because of its changing nature or because of its use of assumptions and approximations or because it is based on the shoulders of giants, which parts of science do you want to trust and which do you want to throw out?  Science will continue to improve, science will continue to delve into the understandings of the universe – as small as my own PhD thesis on the Memory Effect of amylose tris(3,5-methylphenyl carbamate) or if it is the Grand Unification Theory – because humanity has curiosity and the only way to alleviate that curiosity is to search for answers. 

Relying on old books that have been tampered with by man seems to be a poor substitute for the curiosity drive.  In fact, it seems to put limits on what is appropriate which questions to seek answers to.  Relying on contradictory messages from “prophets” of all religions opens up the question of which “prophets” were right and which “prophets” have been wrong.  And the “proof is in the pudding” does not work.  All the messages from the “prophets” have been turned into personal political gain, whether it is Jewish, Islamic, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist, at some point in history.  Don’t get me wrong, science has also been used for the personal empowerment of individuals…but those actions have quickly been exposed and appropriate Earthly punishments have been applied.  Further, waiting for YHWH to punish evil in the afterlife is a lame excuse for allowing evil to flourish here on Earth.  Since no prove of the afterlife exists, this attitude only attempts to continue the status quo.  Evil continues to occur, starvation continues to happen, slow and painful deaths by disease continue to happen, and personal power is continued to be held by those with their own agendas without checks and balances.

Posted in Important Questions, State of Mind | Print | 2 Comments »