Re: Source Code for OS?

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <3A8438A5.6BB43FB1@inetnebr.com>,
Roy and/or Janet Miller  <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:
 
> Paul Schlyter wrote:
> 
>> In article <3A824578.E82EDA18@inetnebr.com>,
>> Roy and/or Janet Miller  <millers@inetnebr.com> wrote:
>>
>>> While this is true, it still doesn't deal with what the Bible says about
>>> itself, which is that it is the very word of God written. In fact, the
>>> phrase "word of God" is used by Jesus many times in reference to the Bible.
>>
>> There is one serious problem with assuming that the Bible literally
>> is the "word of God" though: as the Bible is written, it is as if it
>> was written by people a long time ago, to the best of their
>> understanding and abilities.  But one could really expect an
>> omnipotent and all-wise God to be able to do much better than that!
>> For instance by adding some paragraphs which were gibberish to people
>> of old times but which later turned out to agree well with e.g.
>> scientific progress.
> 
> Then it wouldn't be useful to the original audience. The perspective
> used in the Bible is that of observation from the surface of the earth.
> Now, the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had a similar perspective,
> and yet still accomplished a lot.
 
If so, God ought to by now have provided us with a new Bible which
better suited our times, don't you think so?  Or does God no longer
care for the Bible to be useful?
 
>> E.g. things about the vastness of space, our
>> solar system being only a tiny tiny part of it -- etc etc.  But no,
>> the cosmology, as described in Genesis, agrees well with the
>> medieveal geocentric universe
> 
> That's interesting... something written between 1400 B.C. and 100 A.D. that
> agrees perfectly with the "science" of 1300 years later. More about this
> in a moment.
 
That's because there wasn't much science then, instead there was
preservation of religious dogma.  And any scientist who dared
challenge the Bible would live a dangerous life, risking to be
tortured and executed.  Not much real science could be done under such
circumstances of course -- and back then, the islamic word was
scientifically more progressive than the christian world.  Today
the situation is the opposite; today it's the islamic world which
is held back by its own fundamentalism.
 
 
>> which consisted of our solar system and
>> little else, so well that astronomical discoveries of Galileo's time
>> was banned by the Church because they were perceived as contradicting
>> the Bible....
> 
> The problem, as you should know, wasn't the Bible, but that the church
> of Rome had accepted the cosmology of Aristotle, and had promoted that
> as accepted church dogma, and wasn't willing to admit that they had been
> wrong. Something very similar had happened in another field at about
> the same time... I suggest you read up on Martin Luther.
 
I'm perfectly aware that Luther was no better in this respect -- he
condemned Copernicus for instance and considered him a "dangerous
heretic".
 
 
But still. if God had written the Bible, he ought to have been able to
foresee all this happening, don't you think so?  Then, why didn't he
do it differently, so all these mistakes could have been avoided?
 
 
Of course we have an alternate explanation: the Bible was written by
men, not by God, and then everything becomes quite understandable.
 
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter,  Swedish Amateur Astronomer's Society (SAAF)
Grev Turegatan 40,  S-114 38 Stockholm,  SWEDEN
e-mail:  pausch at saaf dot se   or    paul.schlyter at ausys dot se
WWW:     http://hotel04.ausys.se/pausch    http://welcome.to/pausch