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"Give thanks unto the Lord, call upon his name,
make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him,
talk ye of all his wondrous works. . . . Seek the Lord and his
strength, seek his face continually. . . . Fear before him,
all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.
Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice: and let men
say among the nations, The Lord reigneth. Let the sea roar, and the
fullness thereof: let the fields rejoice, and all that is therein.
Then let the trees of the wood sing out at the presence of the Lord,
because he cometh to judge the earth. O give thanks unto the
Lord; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever."
(from I Chronicles 16:8-34)
Data Collection
Having data implies a data collection
process. On both axes of the
matrix, data is as good as data collection
methodologies. It is much easier to document scientific data
collection procedures than the creation of scriptures. Most
scientific data collection occurred in the
last few hundred years, and by definition, it is a repeatable
process. True there are economic, time, and resource limitations
on data collection. However, with enough money, most scientific
data referenced in scientific journals can be recollected.
Exceptions are events like a supernova, asteroid impact,
earthquakes, measurements impossible because of extinction, etc.
It is hard to collect seismic surveys today where there are new
housing developments, or extensive oil field infrastructure.
However, it is possible, given enough time and money and
resources. If data points, lines, areas, volumes,
time-lapse studies, etc. are not collected carefully, they can be
useless.
For the religious, the scripture and
theological records fall into the same category as scientific data.
It is amazing how emphatically those with faith can be, based on
scriptures which have been modified and changed over the centuries.
The primary scriptural source for this book is The Holy Bible. More
specifically it is the King James Translation of the Holy Bible.
Not the original Greek, Hebrew, nor Aramaic, nor the Catholic Bible,
nor the Jehovah Witnesses translation, nor the New World
Translation, nor any of countless other translations.
Consider the difficulty in translating from ancient languages into
modern languages. It seems reasonable to acknowledge ignorant
translators, careless transcribers, or designing and corrupt priests
have committed many errors in getting the Bible as we know it to us.
Consider the votes at the First Council of Nicaea in 324 A.D., where
the nature of the Godhead was determined politically. Or consider
the fifty-four scholars who worked from 1604 to 1611 to create the
King James Version of the bible from John Wycliffe's 1382 translation
of the Latin Vulgate, William Tyndae's 1523-1530 translation from
Hebrew and Greek, from the 1560 Protestant Geneva Bible, from the 1568
Bishop's Bible, and from the 1609 Catholic Rheims-Douai Bible.
Or consider the printing inaccuracies, revised text, updated spelling,
corrected punctuation, increased italics, and changed marginal notes
following the original 1611 printing in the 1762 Cambridge and 1769
Oxford editions.1.32
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paradoxes