Andy Schlafly #fundie

Andy Schlafly #fundie conservapedia.com

[re: Biblical scientific foreknowledge]

[T]he Bible describes how Pilate, who crucified many, was surprised at how quickly Jesus passed away. 2000 years later, scientific knowledge has advanced to understand that this was caused by his prior loss of blood during his scourging (being brutally whipped), a punishment typically given instead of crucifixion.

["In this case, the Bible shows no scientific foreknowledge. By noting that Jesus died more quickly than people usually did from crucifixion, Pontius Pilate is saying what happened."]

The Bible is providing valuable scientific data here. Sometimes a Nobel Prize is given based on the observation of data, even though the data are not yet well understood by the recipients of the Prize. If observing data can be enough for a Nobel Prize, then why can't it be enough for the Bible?

[...]

You keep referring to Pontius Pilate but it was the Bible and its authors who observed and published the data. Too bad many scientists didn't study the Bible with an open mind. If they had, then a greater scientific understanding would have been achieved earlier.

57 comments

old comment by Night Jaguar

" it was the Bible and its authors who observed and published the data"

Yep, and The Iliad contains a statistical analysis of astronomical data. The Poetic Edda proves theorems about set theory. Makes about as much sense as what you're saying.

Surprise, surprise, Andy doesn't know anything about scientific data.

"Too bad many scientists didn't study the Bible with an open mind. If they had, then a greater scientific understanding would have been achieved earlier."

Odd then that science in Europe was relatively stagnant during the Middle Ages when Christianity was most dominant and progressed rapidly during the Enlightenment Era when Christianity's influence began to wane.
_ _ _

"Sorry, but as a math major, pi is not three. 3 is not even an acceptable approximation."

In ConservaPOEdia's article on Biblical Scientific Foreknowledge it defends this:

Pi, when expressed as one significant digit, is equal to 3.

LOL!

Apparently one significant digit is good enough for the great intelligent being that created the entire universe.

old comment by Robespierre

It is true that observation is at the basis of the scientific method. However, vaguely referencing something that someone else will much later explain is hardly valuable. In this case, furthermore, the observation is made by Pilate and the connection between bleeding and death was obvious to anyone - the Romans, of all people! The cross was a punishment used almost exclusively on slaves, so Jesus was in all likelihood not the first person to be flogged beforehand.

It would be nice if, for once, someone used the Bible to foresee a NEW discovery, not just dubiously attribute to the Bible foreknowledge of something we have already discovered.

old comment by nazani14

"The fun part is that the people at the time the bible was written who were actually doing science and trying to improve the world were killed by the christstains."
"[Citation needed]"

The best known example would probably be the murder of Hypatia of Alexandria. A bit after the Bible was cobbled together, but still relevant. Even in the 1st Century, the Jewish community was very pointedly rejecting the culture of the Classical world. Find your own citations by reading about the Roman occupation and the revolt in Judaea.

Rejection of Classical medicine is a complex issue. Fortunately, somebody has written a book about it:
http://gratefultothedead.wordpress.com/2010/08/28/did-early-christians-reject-secular-medicine-glimpses-from-darrel-amundson/

old comment by checkmate

[T]he Bible describes how Pilate, who crucified many, was surprised at how quickly Jesus passed away.

Citation please. That's not in the Bible. Anywhere.

The only thing that is said is: "But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs." (John 19:33) How do you read "surprise" into that, especially surprise on Pilate's part, who isn't even mentioned?

Crucifiction was the normal method of capital punishment throughout the Roman Empire for a couple of centuries. Tens of thousands of people were crucified. Breaking the legs just made the victims die quicker, much quicker in fact.

scourging (being brutally whipped), a punishment typically given instead of crucifixion.

No, wrong.

Roman records show that torturing and weakening the victim prior to putting him up on the cross was an integral part of the crucifition process. Nothing special about Jesus. The whole point was to a) make the punishment more brutal and thus more frightening to the public and b) make the suffering on the cross more immediate, also being more frightening to the public.

The Bible is providing valuable scientific data here.

No, the Bible is just relaying an historivally accurate account of how a crucifiction was carried out. The whole report, from Jesus' arrest to his burial, is very believable and probably happened much in the way the gospels say it did.

But, that doesn't mean Jesus was God's son, the Messiah, the Christ, or anybody other than a liberal hippy with a few nice ideas about humanity and wine making.

old comment by JSS

Pilate, who crucified many, was surprised at how quickly Jesus passed away.

Well, then either Pilate was being sadistically facetious or he wasn't too smart to begin with. It doesn't take two thousand years of medical science to realize that when a man is tormented with extreme fear that literally starts to destroy him, is crowned with thorns, scourged, forced to carry a cross and later is nailed to it that such a man would actually die quickly.

That term, 'Observing data', I do not think you know what it means. There is a clear difference in observing trends given through samples collected, and stating known phenomenon that should be obvious even to children.

old comment by breakerslion

The Romans invented cataract surgery (and not just the temporary "cure" of gobbing in one's eye), and they refined torture to an art form, but Pilate was surprised? Bullshit story-telling. Obvious embellishment.

The whole crucifixion story is a conflation of the myth of Horus and Set, and the telling of the seasons and the Winter Solstice. The two thieves hanging "alongside" the cross are the two Equinoxes. The "good" thief steals time ("life") from the night (Set), and the "bad" thief steals time (hours) from the day (Horus). Both the pagan cross and the Ankh are primitive sextants, used to transect the solar analemma. Important if you want to wow the masses with your foreknowledge of when the Nile will flood and shit like that there.

"It's all bullshit and it's bad for ya!" - George Carlin

"The rabbit goes through the hole, around the tree, and back down the hole again" - mnemonic for tying a bowline knot

"God's sun hangs/lays buried at the foot of the cross for three days then rises." - Mnemonic for marking the Winter Solstice. Some mystery!

old comment by John

If Pilate had scourged many, he would have observed and considered profuse bleeding as a reason for rapid death. People knew for thousands of years before Pilate that blood loss causes death. That's why the Bible says "But flesh with the life thereof, [which is] the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." Furthermore, there's nothing in the Bible to indicate that Jesus was profusely bleeding after his scourging. Basically, you just made the bleeding up to support your hypothesis.

Assuming the authors of the Gospels, writing decades after Jesus' death, actually reported the whole story accurately, all we know 2,000 years later is that Pilate was ignorant.

old comment by checkmate

@tracer

You're right!

I was only thinking about Matthew and John and forgot about Mark.

Now, according to John inter alia, the completion of the crucifiction of the three criminals (including Jesus) was hurried up so the process didn't run over into the Sabbath. Hence the breaking of the legs. Having the legs broken makes it impossible for the victim to push himself up, causing relatively quick suffication and death.

Since the legs were meant to be broken on this certain day, and since they had originally intended to break Jesus' legs, all three criminals would have been dead ahead of the normal schedual, certainly by many hours.

Taking the account in Mark as written, Perhaps Pilate wasn't aware of the acceleration of the process and was surprised that somebody would be requesting a body so soon.

@Apatheist

he outlasted the other two people he was being crucified with and they hadn't been whipped.

According to John, Jesus died before the others. That's why they didn't break his legs. And how do you know the others weren't "preconditioned" (whipped, scourged, whatever)? General Roman history suggests they probably were.

They only special thing about Jesus' crucifiction was the crown of thorns and the trilingual inscription "Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum". And perhaps the amount of female groupies that came to watch. ("Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs." [Matthew 27:55])

old comment by Taln_Reich

"[T]he Bible describes how Pilate, who crucified many, was surprised at how quickly Jesus passed away. 2000 years later, scientific knowledge has advanced to understand that this was caused by his prior loss of blood during his scourging (being brutally whipped), a punishment typically given instead of crucifixion."

- seriously, Andy? You really think it took 2000 years of advancing medical knowledge to understand "blood loss leads to death"? If you were around 30 CE and acted as if "blood loss accelerates death" were some kind of advanced and noteworthy discovery, people would probably look at and treat you as if you were some kind of idiot. And they would be dead right about that.

old comment by Anon-e-moose

[re: Biblical scientific foreknowledge]

"[T]he Bible describes how Pilate"

...so tell us what Pontius Pilate was, Andy Schaftafly: Procurator or Prefect?

When your Bible can't even give the correct answer to a basic question that is what a major of Middle Eastern History can answer easily - or a few seconds of Googling can do - then it, and therefore your 'God', knows less than nothing

He certainly knew fuck all about those Iron Chariots in Judges 1:19: their construction or their approach. So in a way, you're right: your Bible knew after the fact about your God's weakness: Iron (just as Kryptonite is to Superman), but also the concept of Stealth material; he couldn't see those Iron Chariots being made, nor their approach, so they flew under his 'Omnipresence' radar, that's for sure. And therefore your 'Bible' - the 'Word' of your 'God' - doesn't contain any scientific foreknowledge.

Otherwise it would mention Blu-Ray players. Or describe in great detal what the next format will be to replace them.

If the Bible can't say if Pilate was a Procurator or Prefect, then it can't be an accurate historical document. It certainly proves that it wasn't your 'God' who wrote it, but Bronze Age goatfuckers with ideas above their stations.

Andy Schlafly #fundie conservapedia.com

57 comments

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