[alancalverd]

Duffy, dear, I think you will find the parting of the waters in the OT, not the NT.

And the quote only had resonance with its audience because it was foretold by the OT  prophets.

[alancalverd]

It's a ramshackle collection of historical fact swimming in myth and magic, with a few good ideas for survival in a desert (Leviticus) and an urban society (Mark). A sound basis for workers' rights ("six days shalt thou labor…"  "the laborer is worthy of his hire....") and some  general commandments that underpin most criminal and civil law. But it doesn't provide any excuse for tithes, pogroms, crusades,  inquisitions, self-flagellation, paedophilia, shunning, pilgrimage...… or any evidence for the supernatural or an afterlife, and the reification of the adjectives "good" and "evil" is an insult to the human intellect.

Would you be willing to support each of your claims here?  Start with "ramshackle collection of historical fact swimming in myth and magic..." if you can. If you decide to go ahead and defend your positions, it will require a significant amount of time. One or two liners won't work.   

I think I've explained the dubious provenance of the bible, and few scholars of any persuasion would disagree. The rest of my statement is fairly recent history - ask any choirboy.

[duffyd]

That is a perfectly legitimate conclusion for you. You don't need to make any further inquiries.

true, i no longer enquire whether the bible is true or not. i accept the fact that its not. just like i accept that 1+1=2, regardless how i feel about it.
the thing that i still enquire about though is why others ignore the fact(s) and still choose the 'believe' option. do those people also choose the 'believe' option with 1+1?
what i mean is, for someone to believe the bible that means he is a basic ignorer of facts. does he also ignore other facts in his life? does he ignore the car speedo while driving, does he ignore the ingredients of a food, does he ignore his bank balance figure while shopping? this is the stuff that boggles my mind.

Absolutely. What we come to understand is that people like Francis Collins don't really exist. A bunch of unemployed, creative boobs with nothing better to do, created Fran and endowed him with a remarkable capacity to fool millions into thinking he was a great scientist even though he was really a moron. Poor guy ignored everything but lunch. You can't make this stuff up.

You do find folks who really nail you once in a while, though. "Duffy, dear, I think you will find the parting of the waters in the OT, not the NT." That really shut me up. I was trying to explain that the universe is complex and unbelievers accept all of it without hesitation, but they get hysterical over God parting the Red Sea or healing a blind person. Those types of things are absolutely inconceivable to these open minded students of all things. GOD doesn't exist. He never did anything worthy of  notice. Here's proof there is no evidence for any kind of superior being. Check it out.
Sep 5, 2017,10:00am EDT
The Sun's Energy Doesn't Come From Fusing Hydrogen Into Helium (Mostly)
Starts With A Bang
Ethan SiegelSenior Contributor
Starts With A BangContributor Group

The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
This article is more than 2 years old.
The Sun is the sources of the overwhelming majority of light, heat, and energy on Earth's surface,... and is powered by nuclear fusion. But less than half of that, surprisingly, is the fusion of hydrogen into helium.
The Sun is the sources of the overwhelming majority of light, heat, and energy on Earth's surface,
If you start with a mass of hydrogen gas and bring it together under its own gravity, it will eventually contract once it radiates enough heat away. Bring a few million (or more) Earth masses' worth of hydrogen together, and your molecular cloud will eventually contract so severely that you'll begin to form stars inside. When you pass the critical threshold of about 8% our Sun's mass, you'll ignite nuclear fusion, and form the seeds of a new star. While it's true that stars convert hydrogen into helium, that's neither the greatest number of reactions nor the cause of the greatest energy release from stars. It really is nuclear fusion that powers the stars, but not the fusion of hydrogen into helium.

A portion of the digitized sky survey with the nearest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri, shown in... red in the center. While sun-like stars like our own are considered common, we're actually more massive than 95% of stars in the Universe, with a full 3-out-of-4 stars in Proxima Centauri's 'red dwarf' class.
A portion of the digitized sky survey with the nearest star to our Sun, Proxima Centauri, shown in... stars, from red dwarfs through the Sun to the most massive supergiants, achieve nuclear fusion in their cores by rising to temperatures of 4,000,000 K or higher. Over large amounts of time, hydrogen fuel gets burned through a series of reactions, producing, in the end, large amounts of helium-4. This fusion reaction, where heavier elements are created out of lighter ones, releases energy owing to Einstein's E = mc2. This occurs because the product of the reaction, helium-4, is lower in mass, by about 0.7%, than the reactants (four hydrogen nuclei) that went into creating it. Over time, this can be significant: over its 4.5 billion year lifetime thus far, the Sun has lost approximately the mass of Saturn through this process.
A solar flare from our Sun, which ejects matter out away from our parent star and into the Solar... But the way it gets there is complicated. You can never have more than two objects collide-and-react at once; you can't simply put four hydrogen nuclei together and turn them into a helium-4 nucleus. Instead, you need to go through a chain reaction to build up to helium-4. In our Sun, that involves a process called the proton-proton chain, where:
Two protons fuse together to form a diproton: a highly-unstable configuration where two protons temporarily create helium-2,
A tiny fraction of the time, one-in-10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times, that diproton will decay to deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen,
And it happens so quickly that humans, who can only view the initial reactants and the final products, the diproton lifetime is so small that they’d only see two protons fuse either scatter off of each other, or fuse into a deuteron, emitting a positron and a neutrino.
When two protons meet each other in the Sun, their wavefunctions overlap, allowing the temporary....
Then that deuteron can easily combine with another proton to fuse into helium-3, a much more energetically favorable (and faster) reaction,
And then that helium-3 can proceed in one of two ways:
It can either fuse with a second helium-3, producing a helium-4 nucleus and two free protons,
The most straightforward and lowest-energy version of the proton-proton chain, which produces.
Or it can fuse with a pre-existing helium-4, producing beryllium-7, which decays to lithium-7, which then fuses with another proton to make beryllium-8, which itself immediately decays to two helium-4 nuclei.
A higher-energy chain reaction, involving the fusion of helium-3 with helium-4
So those are the four possible overall steps available to the components that make up then entire "hydrogen fusing into helium" process in the Sun:

Two protons (hydrogen-1) fuse together, producing deuterium (hydrogen-2) and other particles plus energy,
Deuterium (hydrogen-2) and a proton (hydrogen-1) fuse, producing helium-3 and energy,
Two helium-3 nuclei fuse together, producing helium-4, two protons (hydrogen-1), and energy,
Helium-3 fuses with helium-4, producing beryllium-7, which decays and then fuses with another proton (hydrogen-1) to yield two helium-4 nuclei plus energy.
And I want you to note something very interesting, and perhaps surprising, about those four possible steps: only step #2, where deuterium and a proton fuse, producing helium-3, is technically the fusion of hydrogen into helium!
Everything else either fuses hydrogen into other forms of hydrogen, or helium into other forms of helium. Not only are those steps important and frequent, they're more important, energetically, and a greater overall percentage of the reactions than the hydrogen-into-helium reaction. In fact, if we look at our Sun, in particular, we can quantify what percentage of energy and of the number of reactions in each step is. Because the reactions are both temperature dependent and some of them (like the fusion of two helium nuclei) require multiple examples of proton-proton fusion and deuterium-proton fusion to occur, we have to be careful to account for all of them.

In our Sun, helium-3 fusing with other helium-3 nuclei produces 86% of our helium-4, while the helium-3 fusing with helium-4 through that chain reaction produces the other 14%. (Other, much hotter stars have additional pathways available to them, including the CNO cycle, but those all contribute insignificantly in our Sun.) When we take into account the energy liberated in each step, we find:

Proton/proton fusion into deuterium accounts for 40% of the reactions by number, releasing 1.44 MeV of energy for each reaction: 10.4% of the Sun's total energy.
Deuterium/proton fusion into helium-3 accounts for 40% of the reactions by number, releasing 5.49 MeV of energy for each reaction: 39.5% of the Sun's total energy.
Helium-3/helium-3 fusion into helium-4 accounts for 17% of the reactions by number, releasing 12.86 MeV of energy for each reaction: 39.3% of the Sun's total energy.
And helium-3/helium-4 fusion into two helium-4s accounts for 3% of the reactions by number, releasing 19.99 MeV of energy for each reaction: 10.8% of the Sun's total energy.
This cutaway showcases the various regions of the surface and interior of the Sun, including the...
It might surprise you to learn that hydrogen-fusing-into-helium makes up less than half of all nuclear reactions in our Sun and that it's also responsible for less than half of the energy that the Sun eventually outputs. There are strange, unearthly phenomena along the way: the diproton that usually just decays back to the original protons that made it, positrons spontaneously emitted from unstable nuclei, and in a small (but important) percentage of these reactions, a rare mass-8 nucleus, something you’ll never find naturally occurring here on Earth. But that’s the nuclear physics of where the Sun gets its energy from, and it's so much richer than the simple fusion of hydrogen into helium!
Ethan Siegel
Ph.D. astrophysicist,

When you think about, unbelievers have a point. There really isn't anything remarkable about our sun, our galaxy, life. No reason to lose control and begin believing in a bronze age, goat herding, mythical figure based on Horus, Vishnu, Superman, Batman, Robin Hood and Frankenstein like those boobs who pray!!!!
 

[duffyd]

Ok. I'll be honest. It comes naturally, alright? I mean, I don't want to brag or nothin, okay? It's just one of those things. To be frank, it just pours out of me no matter what I do. I don't know why I've been so blessed and no I don't think I'm better than everybody. I am just a poor old boob trying to get by.

[alancalverd]

Interesting article on nuclear fusion in stars. Thanks.

[duffyd]

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BoredChemist

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BoredChemist
This is my favorite verse in the good book

[duffyd]

Our most thorough critic of something she doesn't comprehend, nevertheless offers truly astounding explanations and insights into the farce that is the Bible, such as, "It's a ramshackle collection of historical fact swimming in myth and magic, with a few good ideas for survival in a desert (Leviticus) and an urban society (Mark). A sound basis for workers' rights ("six days shalt thou labor…"  "the laborer is worthy of his hire....") and some  general commandments that underpin most criminal and civil law. But it doesn't provide any excuse for tithes, pogroms, crusades,  inquisitions, self-flagellation, paedophilia, shunning, pilgrimage...… or any evidence for the supernatural or an afterlife, and the reification of the adjectives "good" and "evil" is an insult to the human intellect."
Would you be willing to support each of your claims here?  Start with "ramshackle collection of historical fact swimming in myth and magic..." if you can. If you decide to go ahead and defend your positions, it will require a significant amount of time. One or two liners won't work.   
"I think I've explained the dubious provenance of the bible, and few scholars of any persuasion would disagree. The rest of my statement is fairly recent history - ask any choirboy."

I mean, look at the depth of understanding proffered by this humble servant of intellectual integrity. "I already answered that and everybody thinks I'm right on," the genius who insists Christ never indicated he was divine, no one wrote the bible, what they did write was 200 years after nothing happened except a rabbi annoyed a few guys, and, so on. Talk about a masterpiece, an apologetic masterpiece crushing all things Christian. Devastating analysis. Devastating. My friends, as you can tell, Christendom will never recover.

[duffyd]

How do you improve on that? "A rabbi got on their nerves and they shut the guy up!" Beautiful.
"Hey, I think there's ladies here."
Why?
"One morning I woke up smiling." reiner and brooks
2,000 year old man

[duffyd]

Duffy, dear, I think you will find the parting of the waters in the OT, not the NT.

And the quote only had resonance with its audience because it was foretold by the OT  prophets.

For reasons of repetitive antagonism, this user is currently not responding to messages from;
BoredChemist

[duffyd]

Well, look, you don't have to be all snooty about it. I'm convinced a couple Methodists, maybe an Assembly of God or two, at least 5 Nazarenes and, believe it or not Mom Teresa and one or two other Catholics may show up. Now, did you call anybody yet? I'm dying here man. Let's go!

Oh, BTW, do you want me to call anyone on your behalf? You seem a little you know a little half-cracked yourself.

Happy Fesiivus Everybody!! Now, come on Georgie and wrestle your father, Georgie, until you pin me
No Frank. Leave him alone!

Well diversion  feigned misunderstanding, social distancing, frivoloty, flipancy, ad nauseum.

Call a psychiatrist, please, for me,  please do.

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BoredChemist

[jeffreyH]

How did they come up with this material?
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. 4 You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Can you find comparable speeches anywhere that were composed before this was written for the N.T.?

Funny. Nothing. Why? Because the account is so extraordinary and unique no one could conceive of the things he said and did.

Let's bear in mind, the simple-minded believe we live in the universe and in the MW galaxy and a solar system in which a thermonuclear reactor hangs in freezing cold blackness millions of miles from a blue speck where living beasts possess a flesh and blood sponge that calculates how to send tons of inanimate pieces of tin a million miles away to observe that reactor churn and burn 600,000,000 million tons of hydrogen every second, yet it is inconceivable that GOD separated some water in a river

It wasn't god who separated the water, it was an angry troll called Gretchen. You have to believe in Gretchen or you'll be sent to Scunthorpe. It's in the book.

[Bored chemist]

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BoredChemist

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BoredChemist
This is my favorite verse in the good book

Do you remember signing up to the rules?
In particular, this one.
"The site is not for evangelising your own pet theory.  It is perfectly acceptable that you should post your own theory up for discussion, but if all you want to do is promote your own idea and are not inviting critical debate about it, then that will not be acceptable."

Your refusal to engage in debate is a breach of the rules.

[alancalverd]

Christendom will never recover

For which, many thanks. The world is still recovering from Christendom. It's sad, because Jesus seems to have been a really nice guy with some good ideas, but the appalling things that have been done "in his name " and the wordy drivel that accompanies them, would make him shudder.

[duffyd]

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BoredChemist

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BoredChemist
This is my favorite verse in the good book

Do you remember signing up to the rules?
In particular, this one.
"The site is not for evangelising your own pet theory.  It is perfectly acceptable that you should post your own theory up for discussion, but if all you want to do is promote your own idea and are not inviting critical debate about it, then that will not be acceptable."

Your refusal to engage in debate is a breach of the rules.

That's you, I'm afraid. You do nothing but promote your desire to put others down and make yourself look like you're are lord of all.

[duffyd]

For reasons of repetitive antagonism, this user is currently not responding to messages from;
BoredChemist

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BoredChemist
This is my favorite verse in the good book

Do you remember signing up to the rules?
In particular, this one.
"The site is not for evangelising your own pet theory.  It is perfectly acceptable that you should post your own theory up for discussion, but if all you want to do is promote your own idea and are not inviting critical debate about it, then that will not be acceptable."

Your refusal to engage in debate is a breach of the rules.

I remember it says in the rules everyone is to be treated with respect. No one is to be harassed for their beliefs. You have done nothing but harass me and you harass your other targets night and day. You push your agenda by twisting what others say to bait them into responding to your point of view.

That's all you've done with me. I have copied every page with your attacks. Every page. You have zero interest in debate.

[Bored chemist]

I have copied every page with your attacks.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

[Bored chemist]

You have zero interest in debate.

Well, that's simple then.
If you respond, that would make it a debate and, according to your viewpoint, I'd lose interest.
Feel free to try it.

[duffyd]

Christendom will never recover

For which, many thanks. The world is still recovering from Christendom. It's sad, because Jesus seems to have been a really nice guy with some good ideas, but the appalling things that have been done "in his name " and the wordy drivel that accompanies them, would make him shudder.

I'd like to respond and point out that if you think he was a nice guy, you acknowledge that he lived and that we have a record of him. Since you believe that, take a closer look at what it is that can be known about him. Find out exactly why you think he was what you claim. Your excuse to reject Him because of what others did or didn't do "in His name" has nothing to do with Him. He doesn't force anyone to do anything and since you realize he was a good guy, you might might be impressed with whom he really was, but without an open mind and genuine curiosity, it won't happen.
But, I can't share my thoughts about that with you because if I do, I'm guilty of pushing an agenda. How wonderful that kind of thinking is.

[duffyd]

You have zero interest in debate.

Well, that's simple then.
If you respond, that would make it a debate and, according to your viewpoint, I'd lose interest.
Feel free to try it.

Do the rules require that I engage you in debate?

[Bored chemist]

It's nothing to do with "me". If someone raise a logically valid point, you are expected to debate it.
Incidentally,  you can report someone to the moderators if you feel they are attacking you personally.
Pointing out that you are wrong or asking you to demonstrate that you are right is not an attack.