The Upper Room

A: Is the name of Prophet Muhammad mentioned in the Bible?

1:19 PM

My shameless bid to earn enough points to vote in Skeptics elections:

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Quite simply, no. The claim in the video series you linked is patently ridiculous.1 What is being claimed? The argument presented in your videos is based entirely on the following passage in the Old Testament book of Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon 5:16 (ASV)2 16 His mouth is most sweet...

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A: Is the IKEA catalogue being distributed in more prints than the Bible?

At best, the answer to this question will be an apples and oranges comparison. Comparing the distribution of a static book to that of a constantly fluctuating periodical is unlikely to produce anything very meaningful. However it is amusing and I like both apples and oranges. So what can we do? ...

So far, I haven't been given the time of day! Rough crowd.

Stack Exchange

3:24 PM

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Q: Is there a finite number of Christianity questions?

There are certainly lots of questions about Christianity. But whereas many other SE sites deal with subject matter that's constantly developing and changing (I'm thinking mainly of StackOverflow and English.SE) we have a scope that essentially consists of established, documented doctrine from est...

discussion

Prayer Room

Please use this room to post prayer requests of praise, petiti...

I find this room very very strange.

@TRiG it's an experiment, one without a hypothesis

@waxeagle It's also coming from a culture with which I am unfamiliar.

By the way, I agree, the "God is dead" joke was rather stupid. Sorry.

@TRiG tis ok. I got a bit of a laugh (but I understand why it was offensive). Would you like me to remove it from the transcript?

3:40 PM

@waxeagle Nah. Unless you feel it should be gone (and I don't think it was that bad).

(I have a bit of a thing about the permanence of information, actually.)

@TRiG I'm cool with it staying, but wanted to offer since I know you can't yourself.

5:32 PM

@TRiG Yes, to delete portions of history is to revise history. Very bad. With that said is all your data backed up?

@fredsbend meh, depends on this history, sometimes it's better off deleted

not everything deserves to be remembered...or indexed by google

Also, it's not a full-on erasing; it's more like it's just hidden from everyone that isn't a mod or room owner.

Though they can't be undeleted.

@El'endiaStarman but deleted posts can be quoted (or at least that used to be the case)

@waxeagle Spam ... Yeah some things are not information nor history, therefore, deletion is acceptable.

@fredsbend spam is one case, posts that are offensive or have the potential to be are another exception I'd make.

5:44 PM

1 min ago, by El'endia Starman

Apparently so.

@Caleb When I found skeptics I was pretty excited. Like a mythbusters on the internet. Then this was the first post I read. The accepted answer and it being highly voted is just flat out ridiculous. Then the OP obstinately defends it. Then I found out he is currently serving as a mod! There are a lot of religion haters there I think. A lot of partisanship.

@fredsbend it's the spiritual successor to Atheism.se

@fredsbend even worse for you: he's staff now

@waxeagle lol. I might have guessed. There is that kind of attitude. "Lack of evidence is evidence for non-existence."

@waxeagle ha! Well, I hope he does the network well. How does that work btw. I would poo my pants to be staff.

@fredsbend they are hiring all the time. through careers.stackoverflow.com

@waxeagle What do they look for?

It seems quite a few users become staff

5:48 PM

right now? a senior product designer, a web developer and a sysadmin

they also hire community team folks sometimes, and lately a lot of sales folks

@waxeagle tough though. have to compete with the million or so users on SO.

@waxeagle Sales? To sell what?

@fredsbend advertising. they have 2 offices that are basically entirely for ad sales

(London and Denver)

and job listings

@waxeagle London would be nice. I have relatives there. Denver ... boo. Been there. I guess you just apply like regular, huh? Do they look at your SE profiles for consideration?

@fredsbend it doesn't hurt to have one, but it's definitely not a requirement, especially for the sales stuff

@waxeagle Do you happen to know the turnover rate?

Or have an idea?

5:59 PM

@fredsbend no idea. I've been around for a couple of years now and seen some folks go, but a lot more come

but I don't know about the business side of things, just the community staff and occasionally I'm aware of dev comings and goings

@waxeagle You have a link for the SE jobs?

careers.stackoverflow.com/company/stack-exchange?a=6c

I've been tempted to apply for open positions numerous times, but I've got a few different things that have kept me from pulling the trigger.

@waxeagle does it go "buck buck buck buck ..." Probably family and stuff?

@fredsbend Moose!

[starts running]

@fredsbend combination of things, lack of a portfolio + young family + lousy home internet + already have a good, decently paying stable job + startup instability

and yeah, I'm a little chicken :P

@fredsbend one more thing on this, not even my fairly conservative, christian, science professors from college buy YEC as far as I'm concerned the earth and universe look very very old, and I don't think God's a liar. Where that leaves me on the biblical account of creation, I'm still not sure. But I'm less inclined than I used to be to take it word for word literally.

6:11 PM

@waxeagle Recently, I myself have been taking a hard look at the Flood story. I had already decided more than a year ago that the Genesis account of creation isn't literally, scientifically true, though it still is True, but I didn't extend that to the Flood. Now, I'm basically at the point that the Flood didn't cover the whole Earth...so...what did happen, and what's the point of the story?

@El'endiaStarman it's a really really good question. Does the biblical narrative significantly change if the flood is localized? I tend to think of it as world wide, but then we have to remember that to Mesopotamians, that was the whole world

Like I said to myself while on the way back from class last week, "I don't want convenience; I want the truth!"

@waxeagle Interpretation of the Biblical narrative must change, probably significantly. For instance, if the Flood didn't cover the whole Earth, then you have to consider the humans living in the New World at the time.

7:14 PM

@fredsbend My "Documents" folder and my "Pictures" folder are stored within my "Dropbox" folder.

@fredsbend I'm curious to know what you find problematic about that answer. It tackles the claims head-on and shows them to be unsupported. It is weighed down with evidence and references. It's excellent.

Q: How to handle questions that lead to arguments about definitions

7:33 PM

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This is motivated by this question: Did the Irish Catholic church have slaves in Ireland as recently as 1996? My understanding is that as far as possible skeptics is a place for learning about the facts. It is then up to the reader to make there own interpretations. The above linked question see...

discussion

8:14 PM

@TRiG Thank you. I would have never found that. I left a few comments. I really think OddThinking was splitting hairs. Treated as a slave and legally held as a slave mean the same thing to the slave.

@TRiG My problem is that he basically says "If YEC were correct than all of modern science is wrong." Take a close look at his flow chart graphic. Of the five 1st steps: tectonics is incorrect is just stupid to say, big bang is wrong ... duh, speed of light is not constant ... it's not, and paleontology is utterly wrong ... claiming entire species exist because you found one bone is not science; lots of articles on the hastiness of declaring ancient species.

@fredsbend Well, if YEC is correct, then all modern science is wrong.

YEC contradicts pretty much all we know about everything.

It's the intellectual equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and singing very loudly.

Then it just goes on saying if Evolution theory is wrong then all of biology is wrong when biology has little to do with Evolution at all. Then it says modern medicine can't work because of that. Same with seismology saying that techtonics made seismology when it is the other way around. Just dumb reasoning. read the comments on the answer.

@TRiG That's just plain ignorant.

@fredsbend Bwa? Biology has little to do with evolution? Are you serious?

@TRiG Yes. Evolution did not create biology. Biology created evolution. Then someone came up with the historical Evolution Theory to explain origins. Any bio textbook will be roughly 20 chapters with one or two on Evolution Theory. The rest holds well whether YEC is true or not.

@fredsbend The rest makes no sense without evolution, though.

Welcome to Christianity.SE. We are happy to have you participate here. Now it may sound odd, but this is not a Christian site. Although your answer here has some merit to answer the question, it is outside of the scope of this site to attempt to convert, persuade, pastor, or otherwise minister in your answers. Please see the faq and read the meta posts linked from there. Also, examine some of the highly upvoted questions and answers to get a feel of what is expected. With this in mind, you should edit your answer to exclude the last sentence. — fredsbend Mar 29 at 5:22

Completely off-topic, but I initially misread pastor as pester.

(The comment works either way.)

8:28 PM

@TRiG lol. You funny.

Creationism vs. ☐

Ongoing discussion related to Creationism

whistles

nothing going on in here right now so feel free to continue, just know we'll kick it to another room if it gets distruptive

@waxeagle I need to go home soon (my mother promised to bring me dinner, so I'd better be there to accept it). And my home computer doesn't work right now.

@TRiG Again, that's just plain ignorant. It is Evolution that makes no sense without Biology. Biology stands well without it. Bio is a fundamental science. the science of evolution comes from what we know about bio. The Theory of Evolution on origins comes from that plus a few others.

@TRiG bummer, we'll see you tomorrow then :)

@TRiG R u asking me not to pester you?

8:33 PM

@fredsbend Keep it up. I'll get back to you later. Just include my name so I get notifications.

10:03 PM

@Caleb meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13/… shows that they think they are kind of mean sometimes, especially with religion.

With that I think the site is less than it should be. Could be.

@waxeagle Actually, the hypothesis is a secret: I wouldn't want to bias my test subjects. ;)

@fredsbend Kind of goes with the territory, color me not surprised. But they aren't half as bad as philosophy.

@Caleb Heh! ;)

Q: Are there any non-divine objective standards of good/evil?

@fredsbend And for all my complaining about not being able to get a first-vote, once they did start coming in I got quite a few. It just took a day for somebody to feel safe casting the first vote.

@JonEricson I still haven't entirely gotten over being grumpy at this fiasko:

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This question is a step backwards because I've run into trouble with definitions on my original question: What would be the logical consequences of human will/nature being corrupt? Is there any way to define terms such as "evil" or "good" that do not depend on a divine being as the source of tha...

ethics good-and-evil objectivity

10:31 PM

@Caleb Yes. That's a classic non-answer. The fact is there are many objective standards of good and evil apart from divine ones. It's an utterly disappointing answer. (But I have to say, asking questions on Philosophy is perhaps the hardest thing I've done on the network. It's very easy to get junky answers if you aren't extremely careful defining terms.)

10:41 PM

Your three points merely show that we can't all agree on a set of objective standards. That's important in dealing with people who use different moral frameworks, but it can hardly be an answer to to the question of whether objective standards exist. Consider the metric standards: they exist and are perfectly objective. And yet no true meter sticks exists that meet the standard. (See the is-ought problem.) — Jon Ericson 2 mins ago

@JonEricson I raised a stink about the leading entry being such a poor answer and got nothing but people (including mods) defending it. I'm sure my question needed help, but that was help I couldn't get and basically had to throw up my hands.

Ryan Frame

That's a lot of text to say "no."

@Caleb It's hard to know how a clarifying edit would be received. You aren't asking, I think, if an objective standard actually exists, but what the basis of such a standard would be. Am I correct?

Oh. I gotta go. I'll think on this...

@JonEricson I have my own personal beliefs on whether or not one does actually exist. I think those are irrelevant to the question. I wanted to know what non-religious philosophy would/does propose as definitions/standards not having a divine one to fall back on. The entire question pre-supposes a lack of divine standards.

Getting lectured on Biblical "contradictions" by somebody without any knowledge in Biblical hermeneutics was not what I was going for.