"If you were a god, how would you treat the children you created?"

In the comments section of my article Jesus Appeared To Other People, Why Can't He Appear To Me? Darrin started by asking me "What would YOU do as God?". Goprairie mentioned what she would do if she were God. Then Russ contributed what he would do as God. I thought the interaction was brilliant so I'd like to feature it and request responses from everyone meaning all categories from Believers to Non-Believers, Buddhists to Zoroastrians.

Here are the relevant comments.....

Howard Beale said...
I would do things according to my values and principles which are...
* scrap it all and start over otherwise, knowing full well that I made the parameters, that unless I want to start over I have to work within the parameters and get down to a level that the human can comprehend
* to nurture
* to follow sound principles of communication, because humans demonstrate every day that their behavior can be changed in a variety of ways by a variety of stimuli, none of them having the potential force of a God.

goprairie said...
1) if you were god, would you reveal yourself? to me this is a big duh. what would the harm be? for god to make him/herself obvious to us would sure stop a lot of arguing and fighting and killing. if i were god as i usually hear god defined, i would want to make myself known and stop that kind of crap. like if my kids came home and didn't know if i was here and were about to do something wrong, i would cough to make myself known and prevent their bad behavior.

2) god used to have personal relationships with people. sure, but now we call those personal relationships forms of mental illness. that he 'appears' so differently to people is reason to beleive it is a product of the person's own mind. i know a man who today believes he is a 'prophet' but oddly, the stuff god says thru him is the widely accepted views of a white male 60-something conservative. if god were really appearing to my friend, would there not be some thing that he would disagree with my friend about and that my friend would find challenging and shocking? yet oddly, each prophesy he 'hears' is spot on with what he knows and believes. dead giveaway to me that it is his own brain playing tricks on him, that he is then trying to pass off on us as the word of god. i am pretty sure if god revealed him/herself to me, there would be some surprises!


Russ said...
goprairie,

Great comment.

Question for you: If you were a god, how would you treat the children you created?

For me, like you, goprairie, I would make sure that, at least occasionally, they knew I was there. That's one mark of a loving father. I most certainly would not single out one of them to be nonsensically chatted up out of an incendiary shrubbery, and then, in a monumental display of omniscient stupidity actually expect that everyone concerned and impacted would get the message. Fact is, I would counsel my children that they would do well to simply ignore any and all claims made by each and every forthright forsythia, sincere salvia, ardent arborvitae, and profoundly philosophical philadelphus. Plants are notorious liars.

If I wrote them a book, say three thousand years ago, I would have told them useful things, remembering that, I am, after all, modeling a loving father. Let's say, that although I am omniscient, omnipotent, and whatever other omni's I want to be, I decided not to disclose too much all at once. While I could have kept nuclear bombs and microelectronics in reserve - they would have been really difficult to implement given the technology of the time - I still could have given them much useful information.

Remembering that I actually do love my children, that is, I love every single one of them, in my book I would not pit them against one another by calling some of them my "chosen people." I would not claim to love my sons and daughters while continually demonstrating that I see my daughters as second rate chattel. I would show them a constancy in love that would allow them go to sleep each night assured that their loving father would never intentionally harm any one of them. If I did indeed have the power to destroy my children, being a loving father, I would make sure they were never aware of that awful terrifying thought.

My book for my children would contain lots of good tips: wash your hands; pork is healthy food, just cook it well; slavery is out, period(don't want to interfere with someone's freewill, now, do we?); health problems are caused by germs or a person's own failing body - not demons or witches - so the proper response to someone's illness is empathy, caring, and compassion, not burning them, torturing them, or chaining them to a wall; here's a simple recipe for soap, and here's how you use it; the earth is not the center of the universe and it is much closer to correct to say that the Earth goes around the Sun; here's how to make a printing press; you are related to every living thing on the planet; enjoy sex; avoid violent conflict as far as possible; don't kill those who disagree with you; and, the world is more comprehensible when you approach it systematically through science.

In the introduction I would point out that this material is the best stuff I had available to me, and that as they learn better ways to do things they should update the book with that new data. Being a loving father know-it-all, I would permit updates that were a closer reflection of reality than were the book's current contents and I would disallow those ideas that went too far afield.

I'm guessing I could get all I want to say to them into a 100 page trade paperback in 12 point type, including indexes and appendices (Hey, it's some handy tips from a loving father, not Encyclopedia Britannica). Then, being omnipotent and all, I would drop one copy into the lap of every person on the planet each of whom would be able to read it in their native tongue regardless of age, literate or not(all that omni has to be put to work somehow). Periodic updates would be similarly dispersed.

So, goprairie, if you were a god, how would you treat the children you created?
1:33 PM, January 28, 2009

goprairie said...
russ - not sure what you are asking, but i will toss a couple things out -
i have never tried to write a book for them with all my knowledge, cuz i am here for them. i don't hide in a closet but let it be known that if they have a question or issue or idea, we can talk and we have for their whole lives talked about what is current with them and what they need to know now. i make myself known and available.
if i had written them a book 3K years ago and i had put errors in it, like to hate gay people, i would certainly write them a note now saying hey, i was wrong on that one or hey, i changed my mind or hey, you are misinterpreting that one.
that god does such a poor job of this brings his/her existence into question. anything that tries to make excuses for god not being present to us is making more problems. it is more likely there is not god and when i look, i find alternate answers that make more sense for every single thing ever attributed to god.
9:58 PM, January 28, 2009

Jesus Appeared To Other People, Why Can't He Appear To Me?

God has appeared or unambiguously interacted with a wide range of types of persons in The Bible. But every time I mention that I think Jesus should just come down and visit with me, I get the old Christian rebuttals, such as

- "that would interfere with your free will"
- "God wants us to figure it out for ourselves"
- "suffering builds character"
- "God doesn't do what you want Him too, He does what He wants and He has his reasons that we can't understand"

and a few others I can't think of right now off the top of my head. Those statements basically reduce God to chance. It turns out that Gods interaction in our life has all the appearance of Chance. We may as well call God "Chance" then, or just say that Gods interaction in our life is what we call "Chance".

Why Did God Ever Appear To Anyone?
Overlooking the fact that those rebuttals ignore some relevant real world qualifiers making them eligible to be fallacies, if any of those rebuttals are true, then why did God ever appear to anyone? If they are true now, then they should have been true back then, unless something changed. What changed, and what bearing does it have over whether God appears to people.

Look at Paul.
He seemed to be a pretty nasty character but Jesus popped up in front of him one day and gave him a message. Did he talk to Paul or just put it in his head? Why would God need to talk? He could manipulate the neurons in Pauls head so He could ensure maximum integrity of the receipt and understanding of the information. The details are sketchy because the instances where Pauls Conversion is described don't match up, but in one version, the men that were with him heard the voice but didn't understand. Whats up with that? And then Ananias heard God too. What is the point of only appearing to a few? And what is the point of only partially appearing to some while appearing to one? To have one of them go out and convince the rest of us? Why should I believe them over anyone else? I can understand why the sender would use that strategy if the sender of the message had limited resources, but supposedly God commands everything, including resources.

It would be easy to believe if I could hear the voice of God.
Then I could make a rational decision to accept it or not. But as it stands right now, I don't have any reason to think the Bible is anything more than Folklore from an Ancient Near Eastern Culture. All previous precedents of other Gods interacting with people have become considered "Mythology". Why shouldn't this instance be considered Mythology?

Verifiable Evidence is like mothers milk to a belief.
In the Bible, God has set a precedent of appearing to people in person, and it has the effect of unambiguously fostering and nurturing their belief.

It doesn't take much to change my behavior, just ask my wife or boss. I'm a pretty reasonable guy.
Just like its true that if I want to foster a belief or change the behavior of another person I should logically "do what it takes", God should logically "do what it takes" to change my behavior. Come on God, I love my kids and parents so I call them periodically. Why don't you call me?

IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit

Jeff Carter over at the Blog Sophies Ladder takes issue with applying IDQ principles to the bible and sums up his own blog inserted below.

"To sum all this up, since I don’t use the Bible as a historical or scientific document – I don’t even use it as an instrument of salvation – but instead use it as a guide to help me hear more clearly the living voice of God within me, I find it highly accurate and reliable in terms of this function, which is to convey the spiritual. My advice is to stop trying to use it as history or science. It will only lead to your confusion."

I would like to point out that Jeff's criticism is only relevant to himself and people that share his viewpoint.

He has more criticisms in his article and I will address them in follow on articles, but in this Article I will focus on his dependence on the Holy Spirit. I have written an article called "Reasonable Doubt About The Holy Spirit" that demonstrates the uncertainty that the Holy Spirit actually helps interpret scripture or give understanding. I'm sure there have been and still are quite a few faithful that were wondering what the heck was going wrong while they were being tortured or burned alive by fellow Christians who believed they had the spirit indwelling. The most recent manisfestation of this that I know about is the persecution of Children as Witches in Africa. In the article mentioned above I go into more detail about Christian on Christian disagreements, torture and murder. In the "Recommended Reading" section at the end of this article is a list and short description of all my articles rebutting the concept of the Holy Spirit.

The purpose of the principles of Information and Data Quality (IDQ) are to improve decision making. Therefore the principles of IDQ can be applied to any information that is used to make decisions with. Therefore the Bible qualifies as a candidate for application of IDQ Principles. For example, legislature prohibiting Homosexual marriages, in vitro fertilization, birth control, stem cell research, segregation, womens rights to vote, slavery, laws prohibiting commerce on Sunday morning ("blue-laws"), witchcraft, not being a christian, heresey, etc. Those are just a few decisions off the top of my head that depend on the information in The Bible, but I'm sure I've missed some. One of the goals of Information and Data Quality Principles is to prevent multiple interpretations of data because multiple interpretations of the same data will lead to inefficient decision making within the organization which adversely effects progress towards the goal.

According to The World Almanac of 2005, and I'm going off memory, about 33% (over 2000 years) of the world are Christians. Thats an average gain of about 1% every 200 years. There are Christian denominations of Christian denominations because of disagreements on interpretation of scripture. Jeff belongs to a group represented by a percentage smaller that 33%. There are others that share his viewpoint absolutely, somewhat and not at all. In this day and age there is little to worry about but in bygone days, a Christian could be persecuted by other Christians over disagreements regarding Christianity. The founding of America was a result of the desire by The Puritans for religious freedom.

Christianity shares some of the same Characteristics of an Enterprise or Organization, (not necessarily a business), which suffers from inefficiency. I won't say poor performance because I want to avoid judgments and labels. Efficiency should be a metric that can be agreed upon since I think most people would agree that processes can usually be improved. Efficiency can be measured by assessing how well the goals of the organization are being met. The goal of an organization is usually issued in the form of a "mission statement" and policies, procedures and processes are derived to support the goal. The mission statement should define what the organization is, what the organization aspires to be, distinguish the organization from others, serve as guide to evaluate current activities, stated clearly so that it is understood by all, limited in scope but allow for creative growth

Christianity has a similar "mission statement" called the apostles creed. It was established to try to define what Christianity was and what it means to be a Christian. It seems that Christians were having a hard time meeting the goals of "The Great Commission" (Mark 16:14-18, Matt. 28:16-20, Luke 24:44-49, John 20:19-23, and Acts 1:4-8 ) without some more amplifying information. This fact demonstrates the existence of the IDQ flaw of "Incomplete Representation" in scripture. Below is the apostles creed that the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges as being considered as being derived in part by the apostles.

(1) I believe in God the Father Almighty;
(2) And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
(3) Who was born of (de) the Holy Ghost and of (ex) the Virgin Mary;
(3) Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
(4) Crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried;
(5) The third day He rose again from the dead,
(6) He ascended into Heaven,
(7) Sitteth at the right hand of the Father,
(8) Whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
(9) And in the Holy Ghost,
(10) The Holy Church,
(11) The forgiveness of sins;
(12) The resurrection of the body.

Source The Catholic Encyclopedia

The apostles creed depends on quite a few things listed below, and some of those things have dependencies on the dependencies as noted below. I might have missed some dependencies but I listed enough to make my point. The Apostles Creed depends on the following:
1. Gods existence
2. that Gods representation in the Bible is accurate (depends on 1)
3. Jesus existence
4. That Jesus representation in the Bible is accurate (depends on 1, 2, 3)
5. The existence of the Holy Ghost (depends on 1, 2)
6. The accurate representation of the Holy Ghost in the Bible (depends on 5)
7. The existence of Mary
8. The accurate representation of Mary in the Bible (depends on 1, 2, 7)
9. That Jesus was Crucified
10. That Jesus was buried (depends on 3, 7, 8, 9)
11. That he rose from the dead (depends on 1, 2, 9, 10)
12. On the third day
13. The existence of Heaven (depends on 1, 2)
14. He ascended into heaven (depends on 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 13)
15. That it is possible to sit next to God (depends on 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13)
16. If he returns to Judge or not depends on the INTERPRETATION of Christians of the Hebrew Bible is more accurate that the Hebrew Interpretation of their own Bible.
17. depends on "The Church" actually being authorized by God (depends on the accuracy of 1-16)
18. The forgiveness of Sins (depends on 1 - 16 and Romans 5)
19. The resurrection of the Body (depends on 1-17)

So, unless I've misunderstood, when people in the group that Jeff belongs to say that

"To sum all this up, since I don’t use the Bible as a historical or scientific document – I don’t even use it as an instrument of salvation – but instead use it as a guide to help me hear more clearly the living voice of God within me, I find it highly accurate and reliable in terms of this function, which is to convey the spiritual. My advice is to stop trying to use it as history or science. It will only lead to your confusion."

It seems as though they don't give any importance to most of the apostles creed being true or accurate except the Holy Spirit. If they derive their meaning and understanding from the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not detectable or measurable, and the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of all "true Christians" then it is necessarily a self-centered understanding, indistinguishable from a personal bias, and demonstrably different from other "true Christians" which has enabled the justification for Christian on Christian violence.

Since the meaning given by the Holy Spirit is different among groups of Christians, then we have to wonder what the intent of the singular intelligence behind that is. The phenomena of different interpretations deriving from one source doesn't seem to be consistent with a singular intelligence but a collective. Collective intelligence within groups in an organization is consistent with different interpretations. Collective intelligence within groups in an organization is consistent with Human Behavior and does not require any other agent. Therefore there is no reason to posit any external agency except because it appears in the Bible. It is a manifestation of the IDQ Flaw of Ambiguous Representation.

That means that it matters if the representation of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is accurate. If, when applying IDQ metrics we determine that the quality of information about the topics in the Bible have a low accuracy rating relative to their potential, then since the information about the Holy Spirit is contained in that information, it will negatively impact the Believability rating of the information which decreases the likelihood that the information about the Holy Spirit is of Good Quality. For those mathematically minded, this may be a starting point to apply a meaningful Bayesian analysis to the probability of the likelihood that scripture represents real world events.

If the Quality of Information about the Holy Spirit is poor relevant to its potential, and there are disagreements among those who have the Holy Spirit indwelling and disagree about the nature and characteristics of the Holy Spirit, then one cannot say they have a good understanding of what the Holy Spirit is or does. They are agnostic with respect to the Holy Spirit.

In future articles the two metrics I will focus on in my application of IDQ Principles to the Bible are Accuracy and Believability. Once the Accuracy rating is derived, it can be used to derive the believability rating. Once I am finished rebutting Jeffs Article and then J.L. Hinmans over at Cadre Comments I will provide an article showing the calculation of the ratings.

Recommended Reading
Reasonable Doubt About the Holy Spirit
This article is an exploration of some stated and less disputed characteristics of the Holy Spirit. I purposely tried to avoid claims about the Holy Spirit that were disputed between denominations and Churches. I use these relatively undisputed claims as my core premises to construct the argument in favor of the Holy Spirit in order to express doubt about it.
The Role of Persuasion in The Question Of The Holy Spirit
This article takes one of the examples in the "Reasonable Doubts about the Holy Spirit" article and explores it further to show that there is no possible way for a person to come to an informed belief based on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the alleged interference of Satan or the stubbornness of Humans and that the beliefs that we form about ambiguous subjects are results of factors of persuasion in our environment.
Children Are Targets of Nigerian Witch Hunt
Introduces the problem of Children in Africa being harmed and killed because the congregation are being persuaded by Evangelical Church Leadership that the children are possessed.
The Holy Spirit and The Analogy of The Flame
This article compares the Holy Spirit to a flame and attempts to weaken the claims found in the bible about the Holy Spirit. The flame informs in a way that the Holy Spirit does not.
Feelings As A Result of The Indwelling of The Holy Spirit
Discusses flashes of intense emotion that I used to attribute to the Holy Spirit but now I realize is apparently a biological response to some hardwired morality/altruism/excitement that humans have built in.

Nonpartisan Media Discussing Failed Arguments For God

Over at The Fallacy Files, the article The Arguments That Failed discusses the Boston Review Article God; Philosophers Weigh In by Alex Byrne. Both demonstrate the problems with Anselm's "Ontological" Argument, The Design Argument and The "Fine-Tuning" Argument.

Christians Must Be Agnostic

The Use Or Intent Of Information Does Not Determine Its Quality
Over at Sophies Ladder, Jeff says

"Reliability, on the other hand, I take to mean “can be dependably used” and so, obviously, reliability relates to the purposes intended."

Reliability is not an IDQ dimension, however it clearly is important. But the use of the information does not determine its quality. Poor quality data can be used to make a living with. Its called Fraud. Information can be presented in such a way as to be persuasive whether it accurately represents real world states or not.

Blaming The Victim
Is the Bible reliable – not as a history or science book – but as a conveyor of information regarding the transcendental, spiritual realm? How can one ever know? There is nothing to compare it to, nothing to triangulate (aka cross-check) it with. That is really the point of all my IDQ articles. Using the information in the Bible, the Christian remains agnostic about God whether they realize it or not. For example Jeff brings up Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus.

“How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” he asks. Jesus chastises him for not knowing any better than to be so literal. “You’re a master of Israel and you don’t know these things?”

This is completely ambiguous and, additionally, lacks nurturing. Can anyone be blamed if they don't understand something that is presented ambiguously? Generally, teachers are held accountable if the students don't comprehend the information. In a small percentage of cases, the student has some individual difficulty that prevents them from grasping the information whether its ambiguous or not. When that is the case, the student is not chastised. In all cases, principle dictates that more attention is given to the student, until the student can comprehend the information. From the text it doesn't seem likely that Nicodemus was being deliberately difficult, it seems that the material was exceptionally difficult for Nicodemus, and, as we can see, it is of poor quality because it demonstrates the IDQ flaws of Incomplete Representation and Ambiguous Representation. Simply stated, Jesus did not explain himself clearly. Simply stated Nicodemus is being blamed for not understanding. Is the material impossible to convey in words? Considering how common the phrase "Born Again" is, when clearly explained, it can be "understood" by some. But Jeff says

In the case of the Bible, it is likely that it’s not possible to speak plainly, given the subject matter.

If God Engineered Us, And If We Don't Get It, It's Not Our Fault
Alright, I'll stipulate that "it is not possible to speak plainly given the subject matter" for the sake of argument and I'll point out that if the material necessary to be comprehended to obtain salvation is too complicated for our minds, then, since God supposedly engineered us, he is solely responsible. But he has another option. Being all powerful and the creator of all things gives him the option of implanting the knowledge directly in the brain. There's no excuse for the material to be unobtainable, incomprehensible unless it was of poor quality.

Getting Burned is All You Need To Know About Fire
At this point Jeff tries to build the case that

There is something very small about a concept if it can be contained in words alone.

additionally he goes off down a slippery slope. He asks

Why do we shout for joy or turn to music to express ourselves, if words alone can suffice?

but he seems to ignore the fact that plenty of understanding goes on without shouting for joy or turning to music. The theory of General Relativity and String Theory can be explained in words alone, it takes a long time, and a lot of words, but it can be done. I know because I understand them and can explain them. I can also explain how schizophrenia is produced by a genetic mutation, and how human behavior is affected by that. I can also explain the History of the concept of the Soul starting with Orpheus. In my opinion someone who says that a thing is indescribable doesn't understand it well enough to talk about it.

Data Abstraction
Jeff goes on to reference John 21:25 where Jesus says that the world cannot contain the books necessary to express the Logos. That's fine, but using data abstraction, I don't need to know how fire works or how my computer works, or how the elements in my steak marinade combine for me to benefit from them. Likewise I didn't need to know how the Logos worked for more than thirty five years as a Christian to appreciate it. When I realized that the Jihadists were right when they said that it looked like their prayers were answered and Allah guided those planes into the towers and that, to me, it looked like God was ignoring the prayers of those people jumping out of the towers I decided to stop using a double standard for my religion. I started to "cross-check" Christianity.

Circular Reasoning And Shooting Yourself In The Foot
Jeff's reasoning is circular. There is nothing to Triangulate his data except with such things as the Bible, his personal experience, the personal experience of other Christians, the personal experience of non-christians and Science. Unfortunately the more data we accumulate to triangulate with, the weaker Jeffs case gets. While Jeff continues to minimize the importance of the text of the Bible and emphasize the importance of the inner dwelling of the Spirit, he keeps using Biblical texts to support his case. The problem is that he is weakening his own case by minimizing the information in the Bible.

Christians Must Be Agnostic About The Things They Do Not Agree On
Unless Christianity can value each others information equally, they must remain agnostic on the topics they do not agree on. The topics they do not agree on get to the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Since that is the case, Christians must necessarily be agnostic about a large percentage of the things they think they know. They must be Agnostic.

Christianity is a disorganized mess and it has all the symptoms of an organization that needs their data cleaned up using the principles of IDQ.
But I think that would be its undoing, and I think that Christians know that intuitively, and that the biological algorithms for comfort and self-preservation kick in to preclude them from committing to the inference from the Data.

With help from John, Prup, an Ed Babinski article, and Sconnor, here are a list of some disputed topics within Christianity.
And following that, I listed the staggering number of Christian Denominations.

- Evolution or creationism?
- Being Born Again?
- Trinity or no?
- Arianism
- The disputes that drove the creation of Protestants.
- Denominations of Protestants
- Denominations of Catholics
- War between Catholics and protestants
- Holy Spirit male or female?
- Holy Spirit is a person or not?
- Salvation, faith or works
- Baptism
- Infant Baptism
- Hell is real and fiery or not?
- Purgatory
- Snake handling
- Once saved always saved?
- Where do Suicides go?
- Speaking in tongues
- Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit
- New covenant theology
- The 'two natures' in Christ.
- The Ordination of Women
- The attitude towards gays
- The various parts of the Bible that seem to be later additions, such as the 'story of the woman taken in adultery' and the 'Great Commission' that ends Matthew, etc.
- The Rapture
- Slavery
- Biblical inerrancy
- Christendom
- Papal Infallibility
- Double Predestination
- Just War Theory
- Penal Substitution
- God as a Male
- Sin
- Unforgivable Sin
- Second coming has already happened
- The point in time that the holy spirit indwells and fills you
- Gifts of the spirit given to everyone or different people at different times
- 'pre-Nicean' controversies

List of Christian Denominations from Wikipedia
1 Catholicism
1.1 The Catholic Church: Churches in communion with the Bishop of Rome
1.2 Other Churches that are Catholic, But Who Are Not In Communion With Rome

2 Eastern Churches
2.1 The (Eastern) Orthodox Church
2.2 Western-Rite Orthodox Churches
2.3 Other Eastern Orthodox Churches
2.3.1 Assyrian Church of the East
2.4 Oriental Orthodoxy
2.4.1 Oriental Orthodox Communion

3 Anglicanism
3.1 Anglican Communion (in communion with the Church of England)
3.2 Independent Anglican and Continuing Anglican Movement Churches

4 Protestant
4.1 Pre-Lutheran Protestants
4.2 Lutheranism
4.3.1 Presbyterianism
4.3.2 Congregationalist Churches
4.4 Anabaptists
4.5 Methodists
4.6 Pietists and Holiness Churches
4.7 Baptists
4.7.1 Spiritual Baptists
4.9 Apostolic Churches - Irvingites
4.10 Pentecostalism
4.11 Oneness Pentecostalism
4.12 Charismatics
4.12.1 Neo-Charismatic Churches
4.13 African Initiated Churches
4.14 United and uniting churches
4.15 Other Protestant Denominations
4.16 Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

5 Messianic Judaism

6 Restorationism
6.1 Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement
6.2 Southcottites
6.3 Millerites and Comparable groups
6.3.1 Sabbath Keeping Churches, Adventist
6.3.2 Sabbath-Keeping Churches, Non-Adventist in north Pennsylvania
6.3.3 Sunday Adventists
6.3.4 Sacred Name Groups
6.3.5 Other Adventists
6.3.6 Bible Student Groups
6.4 Anglo-Israelism

7 Nontrinitarian Groups
7.1 Unitarianism and Universalism

8 Religious movements related to Christianity
8.1 Manichaeism
8.2 The New Church also called Swedenborgianism
8.2.1 Episcopal
8.2.2 Congregational
8.3 New Thought
8.4 Christian mystery movements

9 Ethnic or syncretic religions incorporating elements of Christianity

10 Christianism


RECOMMENDED READING
Information and Data Quality (IDQ)
* Journey to Data Quality, from Amazon
* Data Quality Assessment
* Beyond Accuracy: What Data Quality Means To Consumers
* Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations

IDQ Applied To The Bible
1. How Accurate is the Bible?
2. Applying Data and Information Quality Principles To The Bible
3. Applying IDQ Principles of Research To The Bible
4. Overview of IDQ Deficiencies Which Are Evident In Scripture
5. Jesus As God From IDQ Design Deficincies
6. "Son of Man" As Jesus From IDQ Deficiencies
7. IDQ Flaw of Meaningless Representation In The Bible

Triangulation
* "Triangulation", University of California, San Francisco, Global health Sciences
* "Triangulation", Wikipedia

IDQ Applied
* National Transportation Safety Board information quality standards
* Thank Sully!

Rebuttals
* IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit
* Cooking The Books To Avoid IDQ Principles
* Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"

Accuracy In Detecting The Spiritual Realm Using "Triangulation"

Over at Sophies Ladder Jeff agrees that accuracy and reliability are important but his view of accuracy and reliability all stem from some "inner knowing". This contradicts commonly held principles about accuracy and reliability which generally holds that the source of the information is known, can be verified, represents real world states and can be depended on to accurately reflect real world states when verification is not a viable option and when planning needs to be done. But for the moment, I'll stipulate the Spiritual Realm exists.


The Sixth Sense, AKA The Spirit Detector
Jeff says

But the real world for the Bible is God and the spiritual realms
Any value placed in accuracy and reliability must therefore be in relation to the spiritual, inward truth.

In this passage he has presumed the existence of the spiritual realm. But he has not defined the spiritual realm. Where does he get the Idea that the spiritual real exists? Does he get it from the Bible? Surely he does not get it from the Bible with as much effort as he is making to distance himself from it. If he knows the spiritual realm exists, and he knows that he has the spirit indwelling, and he gets information from it, then Jeff has a spiritual detector built in. If Jeff has a spiritual detector built in, like he does for colors and sounds, then we probably all do. And in fact we have most of the world exercising their spiritual detectors in one way or another. Muslims, Hindus, (some) Buddhists, Jews, smaller religions outside the scope of the "Big Five" additionally Psychics, New Agers, Tarot Card readers, etc all have their Spiritual Detectors running gathering data that they use to make decisions with. However, there is little consistency in the data they are gathering, but as a I said, there is a little.

Measuring The Effectiveness of The Spirit Detector
Does the spiritual realm that he's talking about apply to the rest of those groups or is it Christian only? Which groups Spiritual Detector is collecting data that represents the state of the real world. In this sense, I mean real world to include the spiritual world. If the spiritual world exists, and it can be detected, it must overlap with humans and our earth. I suppose a good analogy would be like its another dimension. If the spiritual world can be detected, then it can be described, and if it can be described then uncertainty about it can be reduced, and if uncertainty about it can be reduced then we would have some way of measuring it in relation to other descriptions, then we could find which groups spiritual detector is the more accurate. If we can find which groups spiritual detector is more accurate, then we might be able to whittle away at the myriad of religions and their gods that exist today.

Collectors, Custodians, and Consumers
In Information and Data Quality concepts, there are three groups of people that are stakeholders in ensuring quality of accuracy of data and information. They are Collectors, Custodians and Consumers. One person can belong to any or all groups simultaneously. Jeff and the other spiritual detectors are in the Collector and the Consumer group. In IDQ it is presumed that the data collectors goal is accuracy. It is presumed that the information coming from the collectors will represent real world states, but Humans make mistakes so the data collected must be audited to ensure its accuracy. The way this is done is using the concept of "Triangulation".

Triangulation
Triangulation is an approach to data analysis that synthesizes data from multiple sources.
"Triangulation", University of California, San Francisco, Global health Sciences
"Triangulation", Wikipedia
It recognizes the need to cross-check (aka cross-examine) information to ensure accuracy and reliability. The accuracy and reliability that IDQ measures and was designed to obtain cannot be equivocated to suit the observer, it has to be able to be used and applied to such things as Safety in the industries of Health Care, Aviation, Maritime, Nuclear Power, Chemical Engineering, Construction etc.

Humans Make Mistakes And Triangulation Mitigates Them
So now we just need to figure out a way to triangulate the data coming from all those spiritual detectors and find what they have in common. We can take all that data and put it in a set and reduce it to the lowest common denominator and start comparing it to other things that are relatively well understood. As I said above, there is little consistency in the data they are gathering, but there is some. I know one group of items in the spiritual detector set off the top of my head that are common to all of those sets of spiritual detector data, Human Cognitive Bias. Humans make mistakes, that is why there is a need to audit the accuracy of the data collectors. In my opinion, unless there is some way to increase the likelihood of any those spiritual detectors being more accurate than any other, I can only commit to agnosticism about the spiritual realm and, in principal, decisions should not be made using ambiguous information.

Jeff says

"Reliability, on the other hand, I take to mean “can be dependably used” and so, obviously, reliability relates to the purposes intended."

Reliability is not an IDQ dimension, however it clearly is important. But the use of the information does not determine its quality. Poor quality data can be used to make a living with. Its called Fraud. Information can be presented in such a way as to be persuasive whether it accurately represents real world states or not.

TO BE CONTINUED.....

RECOMMENDED READING
Information and Data Quality (IDQ)
* Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations
* Beyond Accuracy: What Data Quality Means To Consumers
* Data Quality Assessment
* Journey to Data Quality, from Amazon

IDQ Applied To The Bible
1. How Accurate is the Bible?
2. Applying Data and Information Quality Principles To The Bible
3. Applying IDQ Principles of Research To The Bible
4. Overview of IDQ Deficiencies Which Are Evident In Scripture
5. Jesus As God From IDQ Design Deficincies
6. "Son of Man" As Jesus From IDQ Deficiencies
7. IDQ Flaw of Meaningless Representation In The Bible

Triangulation
* "Triangulation", University of California, San Francisco, Global health Sciences
* "Triangulation", Wikipedia

IDQ Applied
National Transportation Safety Board information quality standards

Thank Sully!

By now everyone has heard about the plane crash in the Hudson River. The "miraculous" landing was facilitated by a human being prepared for the split second decisions he had to make by a lifetime of EXPERIENCE, DATA GATHERING, DATA ANALYSIS and SOLUTION PROVIDING. PRAISE SULLY! HALLELUJAH FOR IDQ! Can I get A "HUMAN"?

Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, III
Sullenberger is president and CEO of Safety Reliability Methods Inc., which is a company he founded that provides
* Analysis/Assessment
* Risk Evaluation
* Strategic Vision/Mission
* Executive/Leadership Enhancement
* Targeted Training Development and Implementation
* Team Coaching
* Transition to High Reliability Organization
consulting services to business, government, aviation and health care.

He has three degrees and forty years experience combined as a commercial and military fighter pilot.

News Excerpt from CNN about Sully
US Airways captain the 'consummate pilot', CNN

The pilot speaks internationally on airline safety, and collaborates with the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University of California-Berkeley, whose researchers look for ways to avoid air disasters.

Sullenberger was primed to help passengers aboard the Airbus A320 survive the crisis, said Karlene Roberts, a university professor who co-directs the center.

Education: U.S. Air Force Academy, B.S.; Purdue University, M.S.; Northern Colorado University, M.A.

He was an instructor and Air Line Pilots Association safety chairman, accident investigator and national technical committee member, according to a biography on the Web site of his company.

He participated in several U.S. Air Force and National Transportation Safety Board accident investigations, and worked with NASA scientists on a paper on error and aviation, according to his resume.

In industries such as Aviation, Safety and Health care Information and Data Quality are fundamental. Data Gathering is audited for its accuracy and information is treated as a product.

To illustrate the point here is what the US National Transportation and Safety Board have to say about Information and Data Quality

National Transportation Safety Board information quality standards
Quality - information should incorporate utility, objectivity, accuracy, and integrity.

* Utility - information should be useful for its intended audience.
* Objectivity - information products should be unbiased.
* Accuracy - factual information must be accurate, clear, concise, and complete.
* Integrity - information released to the public should be secure from tampering, modification, or destruction.

So the next time you put your safety in the hands of a professional, you better hope its an educated human that places a high degree of importance in Information and Data Quality principles.

In the last few days I've seen several people who had nothing to do with the decisions made in that cockpit thanking God for their safety, and thanking God that Sully was the right man at the right time, but Sully didn't spend his life preparing for those minutes in Church. He did it by a lifetime of working hard and using his head.

And if God had anything to do with it, then he interfered with normal human activities and interfered with the free will of numerous people. If the claim is that God did it for his Glory, then where was he? All I saw was bunch of Humans doing what Humans do best, helping each other in times of trouble, and many hard working, highly skilled, professionals doing a great job, doing what they had prepared for.

No God Required.
Crisis? Just call educated, data driven humans.

Thank Sully!
Thank the flight crew!
Thank the boat crews!
Thank safety training!
Thank IDQ!
Give the credit where the credit is due.

Cooking The Books To Avoid IDQ Principles

A straw man (aka misrepresentation) and a moving goal post (aka sliding window).
Over at Sophies LadderJeff has misunderstood my position.


I do not think the Bible should be used as a history book or a science book, and I know the Bible, in its current form, was not intended to be either. I know there is no warrant to take the bible as a science or history "treatise". I agree we delineate our concepts such as biology and (as he says) Philosophy (but I wouldn't have used philosophy because its not data driven) based on its intent and its purpose. Jeffs asks rhetorically

What is the proper IDQ criteria to be applied to poetry and mythology? Or better yet, what is the proper IDQ criteria to be applied to information dealing with the transcendent?

At this point he as compared the Bible to Poetry and Mythology and he used the term "Transcendent" in relation to Poetry and Mythology but I haven't seen him define what he thinks transcendent is. He seems to suggest that poetry and mythology are transcendent.

answers.com has the definition of "Transcendent" as follows.

1. Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme.
2. Lying beyond the ordinary range of perception: “fails to achieve a transcendent significance in suffering and squalor” (National Review).
3. Philosophy.
1. Transcending the Aristotelian categories.
2. In Kant's theory of knowledge, being beyond the limits of experience and hence unknowable.
4. Being above and independent of the material universe. Used of the Deity.


Cooking the Books: Shifting the relative value of the Bible to make a point
While I assume he's using transcendent with regard to the bible as option four, I can only guess at how he applies it to poetry and mythology. And I can only guess at what the relationship is between The Bible, Poetry and Mythology. I know The Bible has Hebrew Poetry in it, and I presume that it has mythology in it, but I don't understand how Jeff views it. Usually we don't presume Poetry or Mythology as having the same importance as the Bible and tradition holds that the originating source for the bible is not the mind of humans as is the case with poetry and mythology. If Jeff wants to say that Divine inspiration originates in the mind of humans and is of the same type as any other inspiration I will go along with that, but I doubt he's willing to agree to that.

One persons Relgion is another persons Mythology
IDQ is meant to assess information that is intended for use in decision making.
It is not meant to assess poetry and mythology, but it can, and it will produce metrics. But there is no reason to apply IDQ principles to poetry and mythology because they are not intended to be accurate with respect to the real world. The writer is at liberty to record whatever she pleases with no presumption or expectation of accuracy. However, in the case of Tom Clancy, the accuracy of the information in his books adds to the appeal. Poetry's purpose is not to create text to be used for decision making but to express whatever the writer has in her head. On the other hand, generally speaking, one persons mythology is or was another persons religion. An old worn out religion becomes a mythology. We have plenty of examples of it: Egyptian, Vedic, Sumerian, Greek, Roman, and all the millions of subcultures scattered around the world. African Bushmen had a religion, Australian Aboriginees had a religion, American indians had a Religion etc.

Generally, novels and short stories are not intended as data for decision making, either, but IDQ can be applied and metrics can be derived, but its not clear why one would want to do that. However The Bible supposedly does represent real world states, some history of the Jewish people and the only record of Jesus. The question is what is the quality of that information?

IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit

Jeff Carter over at the Blog Sophies Ladder takes issue with applying IDQ principles to the bible and sums up his own blog inserted below.

"To sum all this up, since I don’t use the Bible as a historical or scientific document – I don’t even use it as an instrument of salvation – but instead use it as a guide to help me hear more clearly the living voice of God within me, I find it highly accurate and reliable in terms of this function, which is to convey the spiritual. My advice is to stop trying to use it as history or science. It will only lead to your confusion."

I would like to point out that Jeff's criticism is only relevant to himself and people that share his viewpoint.

He has more criticisms in his article and I will address them in follow on articles, but in this Article I will focus on his dependence on the Holy Spirit. I have written an article called "Reasonable Doubt About The Holy Spirit" that demonstrates the uncertainty that the Holy Spirit actually helps interpret scripture or give understanding. I'm sure there have been and still are quite a few faithful that were wondering what the heck was going wrong while they were being tortured or burned alive by fellow Christians who believed they had the spirit indwelling. The most recent manisfestation of this that I know about is the persecution of Children as Witches in Africa. In the article mentioned above I go into more detail about Christian on Christian disagreements, torture and murder. In the "Recommended Reading" section at the end of this article is a list and short description of all my articles rebutting the concept of the Holy Spirit.

The purpose of the principles of Information and Data Quality (IDQ) are to improve decision making. Therefore the principles of IDQ can be applied to any information that is used to make decisions with. Therefore the Bible qualifies as a candidate for application of IDQ Principles. For example, legislature prohibiting Homosexual marriages, in vitro fertilization, birth control, stem cell research, segregation, womens rights to vote, slavery, laws prohibiting commerce on Sunday morning ("blue-laws"), witchcraft, not being a christian, heresey, etc. Those are just a few decisions off the top of my head that depend on the information in The Bible, but I'm sure I've missed some. One of the goals of Information and Data Quality Principles is to prevent multiple interpretations of data because multiple interpretations of the same data will lead to inefficient decision making within the organization which adversely effects progress towards the goal.

According to The World Almanac of 2005, and I'm going off memory, about 33% (over 2000 years) of the world are Christians. Thats an average gain of about 1% every 200 years. There are Christian denominations of Christian denominations because of disagreements on interpretation of scripture. Jeff belongs to a group represented by a percentage smaller that 33%. There are others that share his viewpoint absolutely, somewhat and not at all. In this day and age there is little to worry about but in bygone days, a Christian could be persecuted by other Christians over disagreements regarding Christianity. The founding of America was a result of the desire by The Puritans for religious freedom.

Christianity shares some of the same Characteristics of an Enterprise or Organization, (not necessarily a business), which suffers from inefficiency. I won't say poor performance because I want to avoid judgments and labels. Efficiency should be a metric that can be agreed upon since I think most people would agree that processes can usually be improved. Efficiency can be measured by assessing how well the goals of the organization are being met. The goal of an organization is usually issued in the form of a "mission statement" and policies, procedures and processes are derived to support the goal. The mission statement should define what the organization is, what the organization aspires to be, distinguish the organization from others, serve as guide to evaluate current activities, stated clearly so that it is understood by all, limited in scope but allow for creative growth

Christianity has a similar "mission statement" called the apostles creed. It was established to try to define what Christianity was and what it means to be a Christian. It seems that Christians were having a hard time meeting the goals of "The Great Commission" (Mark 16:14-18, Matt. 28:16-20, Luke 24:44-49, John 20:19-23, and Acts 1:4-8 ) without some more amplifying information. This fact demonstrates the existence of the IDQ flaw of "Incomplete Representation" in scripture. Below is the apostles creed that the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges as being considered as being derived in part by the apostles.

(1) I believe in God the Father Almighty;
(2) And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
(3) Who was born of (de) the Holy Ghost and of (ex) the Virgin Mary;
(3) Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
(4) Crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried;
(5) The third day He rose again from the dead,
(6) He ascended into Heaven,
(7) Sitteth at the right hand of the Father,
(8) Whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
(9) And in the Holy Ghost,
(10) The Holy Church,
(11) The forgiveness of sins;
(12) The resurrection of the body.

Source The Catholic Encyclopedia

The apostles creed depends on quite a few things listed below, and some of those things have dependencies on the dependencies as noted below. I might have missed some dependencies but I listed enough to make my point. The Apostles Creed depends on the following:
1. Gods existence
2. that Gods representation in the Bible is accurate (depends on 1)
3. Jesus existence
4. That Jesus representation in the Bible is accurate (depends on 1, 2, 3)
5. The existence of the Holy Ghost (depends on 1, 2)
6. The accurate representation of the Holy Ghost in the Bible (depends on 5)
7. The existence of Mary
8. The accurate representation of Mary in the Bible (depends on 1, 2, 7)
9. That Jesus was Crucified
10. That Jesus was buried (depends on 3, 7, 8, 9)
11. That he rose from the dead (depends on 1, 2, 9, 10)
12. On the third day
13. The existence of Heaven (depends on 1, 2)
14. He ascended into heaven (depends on 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 13)
15. That it is possible to sit next to God (depends on 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13)
16. If he returns to Judge or not depends on the INTERPRETATION of Christians of the Hebrew Bible is more accurate that the Hebrew Interpretation of their own Bible.
17. depends on "The Church" actually being authorized by God (depends on the accuracy of 1-16)
18. The forgiveness of Sins (depends on 1 - 16 and Romans 5)
19. The resurrection of the Body (depends on 1-17)

So, unless I've misunderstood, when people in the group that Jeff belongs to say that

"To sum all this up, since I don’t use the Bible as a historical or scientific document – I don’t even use it as an instrument of salvation – but instead use it as a guide to help me hear more clearly the living voice of God within me, I find it highly accurate and reliable in terms of this function, which is to convey the spiritual. My advice is to stop trying to use it as history or science. It will only lead to your confusion."

It seems as though they don't give any importance to most of the apostles creed being true or accurate except the Holy Spirit. If they derive their meaning and understanding from the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not detectable or measurable, and the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of all "true Christians" then it is necessarily a self-centered understanding, indistinguishable from a personal bias, and demonstrably different from other "true Christians" which has enabled the justification for Christian on Christian violence.

Since the meaning given by the Holy Spirit is different among groups of Christians, then we have to wonder what the intent of the singular intelligence behind that is. The phenomena of different interpretations deriving from one source doesn't seem to be consistent with a singular intelligence but a collective. Collective intelligence within groups in an organization is consistent with different interpretations. Collective intelligence within groups in an organization is consistent with Human Behavior and does not require any other agent. Therefore there is no reason to posit any external agency except because it appears in the Bible. It is a manifestation of the IDQ Flaw of Ambiguous Representation.

That means that it matters if the representation of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is accurate. If, when applying IDQ metrics we determine that the quality of information about the topics in the Bible have a low accuracy rating relative to their potential, then since the information about the Holy Spirit is contained in that information, it will negatively impact the Believability rating of the information which decreases the likelihood that the information about the Holy Spirit is of Good Quality. For those mathematically minded, this may be a starting point to apply a meaningful Bayesian analysis to the probability of the likelihood that scripture represents real world events.

If the Quality of Information about the Holy Spirit is poor relevant to its potential, and there are disagreements among those who have the Holy Spirit indwelling and disagree about the nature and characteristics of the Holy Spirit, then one cannot say they have a good understanding of what the Holy Spirit is or does. They are agnostic with respect to the Holy Spirit.

In future articles the two metrics I will focus on in my application of IDQ Principles to the Bible are Accuracy and Believability. Once the Accuracy rating is derived, it can be used to derive the believability rating. Once I am finished rebutting Jeffs Article and then J.L. Hinmans over at Cadre Comments I will provide an article showing the calculation of the ratings.

Recommended Reading
Reasonable Doubt About the Holy Spirit
This article is an exploration of some stated and less disputed characteristics of the Holy Spirit. I purposely tried to avoid claims about the Holy Spirit that were disputed between denominations and Churches. I use these relatively undisputed claims as my core premises to construct the argument in favor of the Holy Spirit in order to express doubt about it.
The Role of Persuasion in The Question Of The Holy Spirit
This article takes one of the examples in the "Reasonable Doubts about the Holy Spirit" article and explores it further to show that there is no possible way for a person to come to an informed belief based on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the alleged interference of Satan or the stubbornness of Humans and that the beliefs that we form about ambiguous subjects are results of factors of persuasion in our environment.
Children Are Targets of Nigerian Witch Hunt
Introduces the problem of Children in Africa being harmed and killed because the congregation are being persuaded by Evangelical Church Leadership that the children are possessed.
The Holy Spirit and The Analogy of The Flame
This article compares the Holy Spirit to a flame and attempts to weaken the claims found in the bible about the Holy Spirit. The flame informs in a way that the Holy Spirit does not.
Feelings As A Result of The Indwelling of The Holy Spirit
Discusses flashes of intense emotion that I used to attribute to the Holy Spirit but now I realize is apparently a biological response to some hardwired morality/altruism/excitement that humans have built in.

IDQ Flaws Relevant To The Holy Spirit

Jeff Carter over at the Blog Sophies Ladder takes issue with applying IDQ principles to the bible and sums up his own blog inserted below.

"To sum all this up, since I don’t use the Bible as a historical or scientific document – I don’t even use it as an instrument of salvation – but instead use it as a guide to help me hear more clearly the living voice of God within me, I find it highly accurate and reliable in terms of this function, which is to convey the spiritual. My advice is to stop trying to use it as history or science. It will only lead to your confusion."

I would like to point out that Jeff's criticism is only relevant to himself and people that share his viewpoint.

He has more criticisms in his article and I will address them in follow on articles, but in this Article I will focus on his dependence on the Holy Spirit. I have written an article called "Reasonable Doubt About The Holy Spirit" that demonstrates the uncertainty that the Holy Spirit actually helps interpret scripture or give understanding. I'm sure there have been and still are quite a few faithful that were wondering what the heck was going wrong while they were being tortured or burned alive by fellow Christians who believed they had the spirit indwelling. The most recent manisfestation of this that I know about is the persecution of Children as Witches in Africa. In the article mentioned above I go into more detail about Christian on Christian disagreements, torture and murder. In the "Recommended Reading" section at the end of this article is a list and short description of all my articles rebutting the concept of the Holy Spirit.

The purpose of the principles of Information and Data Quality (IDQ) are to improve decision making. Therefore the principles of IDQ can be applied to any information that is used to make decisions with. Therefore the Bible qualifies as a candidate for application of IDQ Principles. For example, legislature prohibiting Homosexual marriages, in vitro fertilization, birth control, stem cell research, segregation, womens rights to vote, slavery, laws prohibiting commerce on Sunday morning ("blue-laws"), witchcraft, not being a christian, heresey, etc. Those are just a few decisions off the top of my head that depend on the information in The Bible, but I'm sure I've missed some. One of the goals of Information and Data Quality Principles is to prevent multiple interpretations of data because multiple interpretations of the same data will lead to inefficient decision making within the organization which adversely effects progress towards the goal.

According to The World Almanac of 2005, and I'm going off memory, about 33% (over 2000 years) of the world are Christians. Thats an average gain of about 1% every 200 years. There are Christian denominations of Christian denominations because of disagreements on interpretation of scripture. Jeff belongs to a group represented by a percentage smaller that 33%. There are others that share his viewpoint absolutely, somewhat and not at all. In this day and age there is little to worry about but in bygone days, a Christian could be persecuted by other Christians over disagreements regarding Christianity. The founding of America was a result of the desire by The Puritans for religious freedom.

Christianity shares some of the same Characteristics of an Enterprise or Organization, (not necessarily a business), which suffers from inefficiency. I won't say poor performance because I want to avoid judgments and labels. Efficiency should be a metric that can be agreed upon since I think most people would agree that processes can usually be improved. Efficiency can be measured by assessing how well the goals of the organization are being met. The goal of an organization is usually issued in the form of a "mission statement" and policies, procedures and processes are derived to support the goal. The mission statement should define what the organization is, what the organization aspires to be, distinguish the organization from others, serve as guide to evaluate current activities, stated clearly so that it is understood by all, limited in scope but allow for creative growth

Christianity has a similar "mission statement" called the apostles creed. It was established to try to define what Christianity was and what it means to be a Christian. It seems that Christians were having a hard time meeting the goals of "The Great Commission" (Mark 16:14-18, Matt. 28:16-20, Luke 24:44-49, John 20:19-23, and Acts 1:4-8 ) without some more amplifying information. This fact demonstrates the existence of the IDQ flaw of "Incomplete Representation" in scripture. Below is the apostles creed that the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges as being considered as being derived in part by the apostles.

(1) I believe in God the Father Almighty;
(2) And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord;
(3) Who was born of (de) the Holy Ghost and of (ex) the Virgin Mary;
(3) Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
(4) Crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried;
(5) The third day He rose again from the dead,
(6) He ascended into Heaven,
(7) Sitteth at the right hand of the Father,
(8) Whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
(9) And in the Holy Ghost,
(10) The Holy Church,
(11) The forgiveness of sins;
(12) The resurrection of the body.


Source The Catholic Encyclopedia

The apostles creed depends on quite a few things listed below, and some of those things have dependencies on the dependencies as noted below. I might have missed some dependencies but I listed enough to make my point. The Apostles Creed depends on the following:
1. Gods existence
2. that Gods representation in the Bible is accurate (depends on 1)
3. Jesus existence
4. That Jesus representation in the Bible is accurate (depends on 1, 2, 3)
5. The existence of the Holy Ghost (depends on 1, 2)
6. The accurate representation of the Holy Ghost in the Bible (depends on 5)
7. The existence of Mary
8. The accurate representation of Mary in the Bible (depends on 1, 2, 7)
9. That Jesus was Crucified
10. That Jesus was buried (depends on 3, 7, 8, 9)
11. That he rose from the dead (depends on 1, 2, 9, 10)
12. On the third day
13. The existence of Heaven (depends on 1, 2)
14. He ascended into heaven (depends on 1, 2, 9, 10, 11, 13)
15. That it is possible to sit next to God (depends on 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13)
16. If he returns to Judge or not depends on the INTERPRETATION of Christians of the Hebrew Bible is more accurate that the Hebrew Interpretation of their own Bible.
17. depends on "The Church" actually being authorized by God (depends on the accuracy of 1-16)
18. The forgiveness of Sins (depends on 1 - 16 and Romans 5)
19. The resurrection of the Body (depends on 1-17)

So, unless I've misunderstood, when people in the group that Jeff belongs to say that

"To sum all this up, since I don’t use the Bible as a historical or scientific document – I don’t even use it as an instrument of salvation – but instead use it as a guide to help me hear more clearly the living voice of God within me, I find it highly accurate and reliable in terms of this function, which is to convey the spiritual. My advice is to stop trying to use it as history or science. It will only lead to your confusion."

It seems as though they don't give any importance to most of the apostles creed being true or accurate except the Holy Spirit. If they derive their meaning and understanding from the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not detectable or measurable, and the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of all "true Christians" then it is necessarily a self-centered understanding, indistinguishable from a personal bias, and demonstrably different from other "true Christians" which has enabled the justification for Christian on Christian violence.

Since the meaning given by the Holy Spirit is different among groups of Christians, then we have to wonder what the intent of the singular intelligence behind that is. The phenomena of different interpretations deriving from one source doesn't seem to be consistent with a singular intelligence but a collective. Collective intelligence within groups in an organization is consistent with different interpretations. Collective intelligence within groups in an organization is consistent with Human Behavior and does not require any other agent. Therefore there is no reason to posit any external agency except because it appears in the Bible. It is a manifestation of the IDQ Flaw of Ambiguous Representation.

That means that it matters if the representation of the Holy Spirit in the Bible is accurate. If, when applying IDQ metrics we determine that the quality of information about the topics in the Bible have a low accuracy rating relative to their potential, then since the information about the Holy Spirit is contained in that information, it will negatively impact the Believability rating of the information which decreases the likelihood that the information about the Holy Spirit is of Good Quality. For those mathematically minded, this may be a starting point to apply a meaningful Bayesian analysis to the probability of the likelihood that scripture represents real world events.

If the Quality of Information about the Holy Spirit is poor relevant to its potential, and there are disagreements among those who have the Holy Spirit indwelling and disagree about the nature and characteristics of the Holy Spirit, then one cannot say they have a good understanding of what the Holy Spirit is or does. They are agnostic with respect to the Holy Spirit.

In future articles the two metrics I will focus on in my application of IDQ Principles to the Bible are Accuracy and Believability. Once the Accuracy rating is derived, it can be used to derive the believability rating. Once I am finished rebutting Jeffs Article and then J.L. Hinmans over at Cadre Comments I will provide an article showing the calculation of the ratings.

Recommended Reading
Reasonable Doubt About the Holy Spirit
This article is an exploration of some stated and less disputed characteristics of the Holy Spirit. I purposely tried to avoid claims about the Holy Spirit that were disputed between denominations and Churches. I use these relatively undisputed claims as my core premises to construct the argument in favor of the Holy Spirit in order to express doubt about it.
The Role of Persuasion in The Question Of The Holy Spirit
This article takes one of the examples in the "Reasonable Doubts about the Holy Spirit" article and explores it further to show that there is no possible way for a person to come to an informed belief based on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the alleged interference of Satan or the stubbornness of Humans and that the beliefs that we form about ambiguous subjects are results of factors of persuasion in our environment.
Children Are Targets of Nigerian Witch Hunt
Introduces the problem of Children in Africa being harmed and killed because the congregation are being persuaded by Evangelical Church Leadership that the children are possessed.
The Holy Spirit and The Analogy of The Flame
This article compares the Holy Spirit to a flame and attempts to weaken the claims found in the bible about the Holy Spirit. The flame informs in a way that the Holy Spirit does not.
Feelings As A Result of The Indwelling of The Holy Spirit
Discusses flashes of intense emotion that I used to attribute to the Holy Spirit but now I realize is apparently a biological response to some hardwired morality/altruism/excitement that humans have built in.

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IDQ Flaw of Meaninglessness Representation In The Bible

Very little in the Bible can be understood as it is written. To be understood as relevant and applicable to today necessitates speculation, interpretation and pre-processing for general consumption. The Bible, as it is written, has become meaningless even though Church leaders try to speculate, interpret and derive meaning from it. Since Christian leaders don't agree, large portions of the data in the Bible is demonstrably meaningless which is a result of the Information and Data Quality flaw of "Meaningless Representation".


This Article is part seven of the series of articles applying Information and Data Quality (IDQ) Principles to the Bible. The purpose of the series is to show that the Bible is not a reliable or trustworthy source of information about God because it has problems from its origin identified in Information and Data Quality research as causing inaccuracy and unreliability. Links to the previous articles are listed below.

1. How Accurate is the Bible?
2. Applying Data and Information Quality Principles To The Bible
3. Applying IDQ Principles of Research To The Bible
4. Overview of IDQ Deficiencies Which Are Evident In Scripture
5. Jesus As God From IDQ Design Deficincies
6. "Son of Man" As Jesus From IDQ Deficiencies

A brief review of Meaningless Representation(1) follows.

Meaningless representation
When the information system contains superfluous information then it can lead to a situation where the Information System does not accurately represent (map back to) a real world state. For example this can occur by the use of too many descriptive terms, undefined terms or some minor addition to the story intended as an elaboration. Meaningless states can still represent Real World states properly, however it is not a good design in principle to include meaningless data if for no other reason than users may expend resources and make commitments based on the data only to later discover the data to be meaningless. For example, the ancient Greek historian Heroditus, while accurate to a large degree, is known to have exaggerated and to have uncritically included information from apparently unreliable sources.

Figure 1 illustrates this point by showing two instances of data represented by spheres in the column labeled RW (Real World) and three instances of Data in the D column. One instance of an information state is not represented by or does not map back to a real world state .

Figure 1



Operation Deficiencies - Garbling:
Meaningless State
In human terms, garbling occurs at the point of "consumption" or reading and interpretation. In Information Systems, it occurs at operation time or when the database is being accessed. Garbling occurs when a Real World state is incorrectly mapped to a wrong state in the Information System. There are two cases in which this occurs. If a meaningless state exists, then Real World mapping will be to a meaningless state, or the mapping might be to a meaningful but incorrect information state. This can occur as a result of inaccurate data entry or omissions of real world states at the creation or origin of the data. Analogous examples of this type of garbling are legends, folktales and the "Artistic License" of the author or originator.

Figure 2 illustrates this point by showing two instances of data represented by spheres in the column labeled RW (Real World) and three instances of Data in the D column. One instance of an information state is not represented by or does not map back to a real world state and a Real World state in incorrectly interpreted as being represented by the superfluous datum.

Figure 2


GENESIS 1-11 IS REGARDED BY SOME LIBERAL CHRISTIANS AND JEWS AS BEING METAPHORICAL
The terms "Divinely Revealed" and "Divinely Inspired" have no consensus therefore they are meaningless terms with respect to the Bible. Additionally, the Bible contradicts established knowledge about such things as the principles and laws of physics of the Universe and Biology. If the Bible was divinely revealed then the fact that its metaphorical should have been divinely revealed. If it was divinely inspired, what does that mean? There is no consensus so it is meaningless. Christianity is meaningless because of its ambiguity, sliding windows and moving goalposts of criteria and definitions. I heartily endorse every Christian to take up their Bible and read it two or three times cover to cover and THINK HARD about what it says. Use your own brain to figure out what it means. Don't let anyone do your thinking for you.

Below are a few lines starting at the beginning of the Bible to ask some critical questions and do some thoughtful elaboration. Please follow along in your Bible.

GENESIS
1:1. So where did God come from? If a creation is evidence of a creator, and if everything that exists is created, then if god exists, he is evidence of his creator or he is "a special case" with no precedent and no extra-biblical evidence or God is a result of apologetic "special pleading" fallacies.
1:2. Is similar to pre-existing Egyptian creation myths
1:3. Where did the light come from without suns? Some speculative "Pre-light"?
1:4. Darkness is the absence of light. To say that light and dark "can be separated" is meaningless.
1:5. This depends on Gen 1:4 being true so its meaningless as well.
1:6. The ancients thought there was as much water in the sky as on the earth somehow being prevented from falling.
1:7. Depends on Gen. 1:6 being true so its meaningless
1:8. Also depends on Gen. 1:6 being true so its meaningless as well.
1:9. This is similar to the pre-existing egyption creation myth of Atum creating a hill out of the watery chaos to become the Egyptian city of Heliopolis so he could stand and then have his temple built on it. The Bible neglects to mention that there is more water than land and there are more than one land mass, which makes it meaningless to "gather the water into one place so that land can appear".
1:10. God named the land and the sea. But that presumes there was and always has been one original language, when it is known that this cannot be true due to the variety of fundamental differences and mutually exclusive features of the languages of the world. Communication between members of a species is not unique to Human Beings. And should there have been an original language that God spoke, then to guarantee its preservation to this day would have been a reasonable and efficient way of guaranteeing the integrity of the Data recorded in the Bible.

As one goes line by line through the Bible elaborating and assessing the information contained within, its mythological character should become undeniable to most people. If we take the Bible to be 100% true when we start reading it, then as we go through it and find statements that we know to be false and we find statements whose truth depends on false statements, then we should reduce our percentage of belief with every fact shown to be false.

Below is an overview of some major but not all inclusive problems with the remaining chapters of Genesis up to chapter eleven. Why is Genesis important? Because it lays the foundation for the human necessity of redemption by way of the Human Sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.

GENESIS 1 continued
* Genesis 1:1-25 Is An Amalgam of Near Eastern Creation Myths
* Genesis 1:26-1:27, Creation of Humans in Near Eastern Myths And The Paleolithic Era

GENESIS 2
ADAM AND EVE
The Story of Adam and Eve is considered a metaphorical story in Liberal Christian Circles. Several disconfirming facts are listed below with links to my articles elaborating on them.
- Being made in the image of God is meaningless, there is no consensus on what "the image of God" is.
* Disqualifying Adam and Eve. There is no reason outside of the Bible to accept this story as representing a Real World event.
* Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil. Shows how the Christian Tenet that humans are "incompetent" nullifies any reliable interpretation of the Bible or any knowledge supposedly gained through flawed Human reasoning.
* GENESIS 1:28-2:4a, Be Fruitful And Multiply, Founder Effect and Genetic Diversity. Shows how lack of Genetic Diversity would prevent the establishment of a Robust and Healthy population.
* Genesis 2:4b-20: Man Made From Earth Is Folklore, Conflated River Elements and the Myth of Adapa. Discusses a correlation between Hebrew and all other Folklore typologies regarding the first humans.
* Genesis 2:21-25: Woman From Rib and Mother Goddesses of Near Eastern Myths. Discusses a correlation between Hebrew and all other Folklore typologies regarding Eve.

GENESIS 3: THE FALL OF MAN
- Killed an animal and made clothes for them, the eyed-needle first showed up about 45,000 years ago with the Cro-Magnons(7).
* Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior. Shows how the physical makeup of the first Humans guaranteed the emergence of the behavior they subsequently got punished for.
* Gen. 2-3, Normal-form Game Matrix Shows That God Chose The Worst Outcome. Shows that the omniscient God Character in the Bible chose the worst possible outcome for his creation guaranteeing all the problems that subsequently occurred.
* Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent. Shows how Adam and Eve did not have enough life experience to make good decisions.
* Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.
* Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option. Shows that using effective principles of parenting, Adam and Eve's transgression warranted nurturing correction rather than expulsion and the handicap of being cursed by a God.

GEN 4 CAIN AND ABEL
- Founder effect. Due to lack of genetic variation, the effect of the small percentage of natural mutations are amplified in a population generally reducing the efficiency of the organism and increasing the probability of birth defects.
* GENESIS 1:28-2:4a, Be Fruitful And Multiply, Founder Effect and Genetic Diversity
- Where did the other people come from, where they all first and second generation relatives?
- 4:17 he built a city and called it Enoch. People first lived in caves then around 28,000 years ago starting building shelter structures out of Mammoth bone(7). How did they go from cavest to bone structures to cities in one generation?

THE MARK OF CAIN
- The Mark of Cain is meaningless. There is no clear consensus on what it was.
- It was thoughtlessly regard by some as Black Skin, justifying racism. However all Cains offspring would have been destroyed in the Flood if the Flood had really happened. Any critical analysis of the text would have revealed that inconsistency.

GEN 5 DESCENDENTS OF ADAM
- no one lived that long, the human body cannot support it. Accumulated DNA Damage guarantees that.
* Wikipedia, DNA Damage Theory of Aging

GEN 6 CORRUPTION OF MANKIND
- Nephilim? Very similar to the Greek Titans.
- Similar to Babylonian myths, Enuma Elish
* Wikipedia, Enuma Elish
- Mathematically and Logistically, the Ark doesn't add up.

GEN 7 THE GREAT FLOOD
- Similar to Babylonian myths, Enuma Elish
- Where did all the water come from and go?

“The book of Genesis says of the Flood that ‘… all the high hills that were under the whole of heaven were covered…’ Taken literally, this seems to indicate that there were 10,000 to 20,000 feet of water on the surface of the earth, equivalent to more than half a billion cubic miles of liquid! Since, according to biblical accounts, it rained for forty days and forty nights, or for only 960 hours, the rain must have fallen at a rate of at least fifteen feet per hour, certainly enough to sink any aircraft carrier, much less an ark with thousands of animals on board.” - John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy, (Collins Publishers, 1988), p. 13.

GEN 8 THE FLOOD SUBSIDES
- God evidently changed his mind and said that he would never do that again even though "every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood". God cannot logically change his mind if he knows everything from the beginning. Once he knows the future, the future is set. If the future changes, then he didn't know it. If he knew of a finite number of outcomes, he should have know which one would happen, thereby making all other outcomes irrelevant.
- The earth would be a big marsh after that.

GEN 9 COVENANT OF THE RAINBOW
- Founder effect again.
- The rainbow is a refraction of light and can be reproduced in the lab. It would have been present before the flood unless the physics of the world was different prior. Since God set it up as a "note to self", God cannot be omniscient.
- Noah was mad at Ham so he cursed his son Canaan? All Ham did was tell his brothers that Noah was Naked. Any other interpretation is pure speculation.

GEN 10 DESCENDENTS OF NOAH
- Founder effect again.

GEN 11 TOWER OF BABEL
- How does an ancient Zuggarat no more than 170 meters tall threaten a god and space travel doesn't?
- There was never a single language. The exact definition of Language differs from one theory to another, but it is evident that other species have forms of communication, therefore, it is likely that communication and language develop within a culture, therefore independent of each other.
Wikipedia, Origin of Language
- DNA Damage guarantee humans can't live much more than 120 years.
- God didn't know everything because he was evidently surprised by how capable humans were to build the Zuggarat.

MEANINGLESS ITEMS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT
If the Bible was Divinely inspired or Divinely revealed, then its truths should be timeless, not just applicable to the the time frame they were written. Apologists will tell you that the authors were speaking to people of their time, but that excludes any influence that an omniscient being would have had. In fact, plenty of "truths" originating from the ancients have survived relatively uninterpreted and sound to this day, specifically mathematics. Likewise, an omniscient being could be expected to do just as well as its human creations in creating and preserving ideas.

The New Testament is full of meaningless things. Here are a few examples.

DO CHRISTIANS NEED TO LIVE UNDER OLD TESTAMENT LAW OR NOT?
It seems clear that Jesus intended Christians to keep the old testament laws without apologetic equivocation.

17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.
18"For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.
19"Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

TURNING THE OTHER CHEEK, ON ITS FACE, IS BAD ADVICE
It enables bad behavior to continue. The middle ground is the more appropriate where harm is minimized and less harmful behavior is nurtured. As it is written, it is meaningless without some further interpretation and speculation on the intention behind the speaker, namely God as Jesus. And who is qualified to interpret the intentions of God?

38 "You have heard that it was said, 'AN EYE FOR AN EYE, AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.'
39 "But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.
40 "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.
41 "Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.
42 "Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

Are Christians saved by Faith, Works or Both?
Depends on who you talk to. There is no consensus therefore it is meaningless.

JESUS COMMITS A FALLACY
"Whoever is not with me is against me" and "whoever is not against us is for us". Logically this is mutually exclusive and it is a fallacious reasoning scheme. If you have three groups of people, committed, rebellious, and ambivalent, then Luke 12:30 would exclude 66% percent while Mark 9:40 would only exclude 33%. Luke would exclude the Middle while Mark would include them. What happens to those that don't care one way or the other? Who knows? Therefore its meaningless and logically inconsistent coming from the mouth of God.

Luke 12:30 "He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters."
Mark 9:40 "For he who is not against us is for us."

Is it possible that God revealed his word to Joseph Smith?
Again, it depends on who you talk to. There is no logical reason that it could not have happened, especially if it presumed that Gods interaction in peoples lives is ongoing to this day.

PRAYER IS MEANINGLESS
My article on "The Promise of Prayer"
Why does one pray? God should already know what is desired. People should not be able to influence God if he has a plan and already knows everything in advance. Does he need or want praise? How does a perfect being need or want anything?

I invite the reader to continue to apply what they already know to elaborating and evaluating the data in the Bible.

References and Further Reading
1. Anchoring Data Quality Dimensions in Ontological Foundations
2. GENESIS 1:28-2:4a, Be Fruitful And Multiply, Founder Effect and Genetic Diversity
3. Wikipedia, DNA Damage Theory of Aging
4. Wikipedia, Enuma Elish
5. John Allen Paulos, Innumeracy, (Collins Publishers, 1988), p. 13.
6. Wikipedia, Origin of Language
7. Human Prehistory and The First Civilizations, Brian M. Fagan, The Teaching Company

My Criticisms of Genesis One through Three consolidated.
Highlights the characteristics and typologies of Near Eastern folklore in the Bible and points out where it deviates from what we know about history and nature.
1. Genesis 1:1-25 Is An Amalgam of Near Eastern Creation Myths
2. Genesis 1:26-1:27, Creation of Humans in Near Eastern Myths And The Paleolithic Era
3. GENESIS 1:28-2:4a, Be Fruitful And Multiply, Founder Effect and Genetic Diversity
4. Genesis 2:4b-20: Man Made From Earth Is Folklore, Conflated River Elements and the Myth of Adapa
5. Genesis 2:21-25: Woman From Rib and Mother Goddesses of Near Eastern Myths

Criticisms of the Story of Adam and Eve (AKA Adam Bombing).
1. Adam and Eve and the Problem of Evil
2. Disqualifying Adam and Eve
3. Gen. 2:16-3:24: Adam and Eve Were Mentally Incompetent
4. Gen. 2:7-3:6, God Should Have Known That Adam Would Disobey.
5. Gen. 2:6-9, God Ignored Adams Admonishment Option
6. Adams Sin Was An Emergent Behavior
7. Gen. 2-3, Normal-form Game Matrix Shows That God Chose The Worst Outcome