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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Noah's Flood
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
Graham Hancock is a controversial and disputed author. I would say he raises some interesting questions (about advanced pre flood societies)and tends to point to very advanced civilisations and in that broad brush stroke way i would tend to agree with him.
But wouldn't you have thought it odd that such very advanced civilisations didn't seem to have got round to building any boats until God handed the blueprints to Noah?
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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
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Myrrh
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# 11483
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:
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Originally posted by Jamat:
Nice post Myrrh. Well researched and all in all a pretty good case for a global flood..which would also explain the extinction event.
I think you might need to re-read that. The "global" flood Myrrh speaks of seems very divergent from the flood you speak of earlier in the thread.
Certainly, Myrrh's underlying assumption is that flood events were localised, However, that is just one way of interpreting the evidence she quotes. Say, for instance the timing assumed for these 'local' events was not accurate? Say also that Extinctions and glaciation events were the simultaneous result of a catstrophic climate adjustment due to the collapse of the prediluvian eco system? Since no one alive now was there and there are plenty of vested interests in finding alternative non Biblical explanations of what we see in and on the earth, why not have an alternative alternative explanation, viz: the Bible is accurate in what it says about a global flood.
[/QB]
Geologists are beginning to come to grips with dating events and understanding the movement of land masses and speed at which changes can occur - but this is oh so very recent. At the beginning of the last century no one understood techtonic plates, the proposer of the idea didn't live to see his work vindicated, and the Scablands debate raged because the proposer came up against the establishment scientists who ridiculed the idea that such dramatic changes in the landscape could happen practically instantly because they were comfortable with the idea that erosion of rocks takes millions of years.
We've now got a good idea of when the last big extinction event happened, it wasn't only the sabre tooths and woolly mamoths but the range of animals at the time including the still sparse inhabitants of northern Americas, and the best explanation to date, imv, is comet which took us back into the ice age for around a thousand years. Because this was an event within a greater span of time which periodically returns within the ice age that we are still in, the interglacial. These last around 20,000 years and we're coming to the end of the one we're in.
So the global flooding for me is first of all the beginning of the interglacial when temperature begin to creep up causing the ice bound regions, particularly northern hemisphere, to give back what they had previously taken up, and global flooding begins from this. This temperature rise reaches its peak around the middle of these interglacials (see Vostok graph), and is relatively rapid. From this high point all kinds of effects happen depending on the topography of the different regions, and at different times.
There are various estimates for the Black Sea inundation, around 5,000 BC, but the description of the effect is much like that for the Scablands flooding (extract below), a sudden raising of the level of the Med causing the land bridge to be swept away because the ice barrier finally broke.
quote:
Pardee went on to propose that the way this occurred was that the ice dam had blocked the water until the water became deep enough to lift up the ice dam and allow the blocked water to rush out with almost unimaginable force so that the lake was completely emptied within just 48 hours. He suggested that the lobe of the Cordilleran Glacier was the actual plug or dam that blocked the Clark Fork River. This ice dam caused the formation of Lake Missoula (4,150 feet above sea level) to reach a depth of about 2,000 feet over some 3,000 square miles.5 When the ice dam failed, 500 cubic miles of water rushed out of Lake Missoula at 50 to 60 miles per hour (or 9.46 cubic miles per hour), which translates into a 2,000 foot wall of water smashing with Herculean force all the way to the pacific ocean. Scablands
My view, to date, is that the Noah story actually begins with the local Black Sea event because of the Indian sources, but.. Exploring this a bit more which I'd begun to do last time on a Noah thread which I didn't get back to, I think it possible, because the Black Sea flood appears to be much earlier than Noah/Gilgamesh, that a another later flood in the Mesopotamian/Armenian region was superimposed on the ealier tale of the Black Sea flood. But not yet decided.
But anyway, the OT description is "the mountains of Ararat" which refers to the land of Urartu which at that time was a bigger area than Armenia is now, but centred where it is today, the rest of this article worth reading.
quote:
Therefore, the authors are proposing that the most likely scenario was as follows:
a) Noah lived in the Aras (Araxes) river valley and there he built the famous Ark. (see Noah's Ark, How to build one )
b) When the flood came, and when "Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail" the Ark with its passengers were floated on a severely flooded Aras river.
c) That when the flood receded the Ark finally settled somewhere around the rim of the Aras valley, not far from where it started its journey.
d) Then after the flood Noah and family settled in the area of Nakhichevan (Naxcivan).
There are two traditional landing spots in the area, the Ilandagh (Snake mountain) chain (peak at 7825 ft. (2385 m))(from http://www.faik.00server.com/ index.html) and also Gapicig mountain as follows.
Ararat
It's an interesting area of early settled civilization, predating, from the variety and diversity of crops, settlements in later Mesopotamia which appear to have taken some examples of the crops to begin their settlements. A good candidate for the Garden of Eden of Genesis perhaps.
Myrrh
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pjkirk
Shipmate
# 10997
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Posted
I'm curious then - if the Flood is likely to a remaining cultural memory of localized flooding during the beginning of this interglacial, perhaps the Garden of Eden is an even further back memory of the previous interglacial period?
It seems farfetched, but it blows my mind already that the memory of flooding at the beginning of this interglacial could still be remembered....
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Dear God, I would like to file a bug report -- Randall Munroe (http://xkcd.com/258/)
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
If it sounds too mind-blowing to be true....
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
Do I think that (as I think Petaflop pointed out some time ago) God opened the windows of heaven, that within forty days the peaks of the mountains were 30 feet under water, that 150 days later it was all over, and that a handful of people in a boat saved vast numbers of species of animal? No I don't, not remotely. I think it is physically impossible.
But doesn't everyone agree that the Flood, as described in Genesis, is in the ordinary run of things, physically impossible? Surely no one thinks that a global inundation of that sort is the kind of thing that might just have happened after a spot of heavy rain. If it happened, it happened by God miraculously working to do something that otherwise could never have occurred.
The problems in sourcing the necessary quantity of water, and then getting rid of it, and in assembling, caring for, and safely releasing to their proper habitats representative species of every animal ‘kind', and so on, are real enough, but miss the point. The Flood story can only be true if God did it by miracle, and "God did it by miracle" accounts for all those difficulties.
The real obstacle to believing in the historical-as-described Flood is not that God would have found it tricky to manage, but that God seems to have painstakingly avoided leaving the sort of physical traces that the event must have left. God doing it isn't the problem - God covering it up is. But that's a theological, rather than a scientific or historical problem: for anyone who does not entirely reject the Biblical account, the choice is essentially whether to prefer as more credible and consistent the picture of a God who allows a rather horrible tribal myth to be used as part of his sacred scriptures, or the alternative picture of a God who drowns the world, plainly announces what he has done in writing, but then hides all the other evidence that would prove the writing to be true.
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
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Myrrh
Shipmate
# 11483
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:
I'm curious then - if the Flood is likely to a remaining cultural memory of localized flooding during the beginning of this interglacial, perhaps the Garden of Eden is an even further back memory of the previous interglacial period?
It seems farfetched, but it blows my mind already that the memory of flooding at the beginning of this interglacial could still be remembered....
Although local flooding events can be dramatic, the Scablands extract described what would be extrapolated to the North Sea and Black Sea events for example, the ice barriers give way at different times during the interglacial, thousands of years can separate these events. The Black Sea inundation some 3-4000 years later than the initial North Sea event which first separated Ireland from England and the later which created the English Channel separating us from the rest of Europe. All over the globe there would have been dramatic effects from the vast billions of ice melting, but in different areas at different times depending on the geological factors at play in the local conditions - as worldwide over 400 ft of sea level drop taken up by the ice age to our time now would be returned into the system - huge rivers such as the Sarasvati appearing and lasting for some thousands years suggests a longer time scale of melting from the Himalayas for example say 10-13 thousand years ago and lasting several thousands of years to later inundations say 7 thousand years ago around the Lake Van 'Noah' region which happened and was over in a year. Lake Van is at over 5,000 ft and its waters are saline.
Twenty thousand years ago plus the northern hemisphere was pretty much uninhabitable to modern man (about c130,00 years old) and it's only since the beginning of the interglacial as the icy grip gave way that people began moving into these areas. The Clovis people in the northern Americas particularly on the east coast who disappeared at the extinction event nearly half way through the cycle have been traced to originating in France, so the only memories we have is from archeology. But interestingly we do have continuous memory in the Hopi tradition.
They say they began arriving in the Americas from the bottom South West tip 22,000 years ago and moved up their present location over thousands of years. (And their teaching is that there have been four ages of dramatic extinctions of people and we're on the cusp of the next great extinction as we move into the fifth - perhaps these are from memories of previous interglacials from people who viewed such changes from a safer distance.) So memories that far back are still extant.
The OT story is of people the other side of the world and the Genesis retelling of Adam and Eve appears to make sense if seen as a local account of history remembered and as two separate stories of how 'mankind' appeared from their own local perspective. The first, the general Adam meaning humankind as the people in the possibly ancient Urartu/Aratta region, centred on present day Armenia and taking in parts of Turkey and Iran, and the second the specific family history of one branch of these people.
The first the fuzzy 'and God created humankind from a non-specific area and set them in a garden in a specific place where there was a great variety of food etc.' and the second the particular story leading from Adam and Eve as remembered ancestors (and possibly indicating an historical change from matriarchal to patriarchal society and from hunter/gatherers to agriculture) when then spreading from this area, the expulsion, and so to Noah and the flood destroying what had been established in this spread from Lake Van.
To go further back pre our glacial and to the previous one brings us to the extinction event where we, humankind, were practically all wiped out. Genetically we can now see how a small viable breeding pool, the bottleneck, survived in Africa and to which we are, for all our incredible diversity of colour and physique, all connected as we spread over all the globe.
Diversity takes time, or rather can show that considerable time has passed, (we can tell how old a hedgerow is by the number of different species of plant in it), but can happen dramatically quickly to adapt to different situations. The shrinking of elephants when stuck on islands such as off the coast of California perhaps an example of this adaptation by miniaturisation, the jury's still out.
So then, to read the Bible as the story of all mankind is only possible if one doesn't know that different peoples all over the world have their own histories, and some as in India have a continuous living complex tradition much longer than that of the OT.
The fun, and mindblowingness, is in piecing together these different accounts with what we can learn about the workings of the earth over time through such specialisations as archeology and a better, and still only just past its infancy, understanding of the earth's geology and so on.
So far the best foray into making sense of the Old Testament Adam and Eve, from the initial deciphering of the Sumerian script in the 19c which was a huge exponential leap, is this, imv, the work done by David Rohl building on, forgotten the man's name, on an earlier speculation that the account in Genesis of the Garden of Eden related an actual discrete specific place as a description rather than the wide area envisaged by previous analysis which saw the rivers as thousands of miles apart and so on. Ah, here, the man's name is Reginald Walker -
quote:
Secret Garden
According to David Rohl, however, the true identities of the Gihon and Pishon were cracked by one Reginald Walker, a little-known scholar who died 10 years ago. Walker had published his findings in the quaintly titled "Still Trowelling", newsletter of the Ancient and Medieval History Book Club, in 1986. "But because the prevailing wisdom even among most biblical scholars is that the Old Testament is little more than myth," said Rohl, "nobody took him seriously."
So let's reconsider Walker's findings. Just north-east of where Rohl and I, with our half daft smiles, had entered the supposed Eden, there's a river called the Aras. But before the Islamic invasion of the 8th century AD, as Walker discovered, the Aras was known as the Gaihun, equivalent of the Hebrew Gihon. Amazingly, as Rohl subsequently found, Victorian dictionaries had referred to the river as the Gihon-Aras.
Re DNA - It's now possible to trace one's own ancestral migration route from personal DNA (as this man has done:
Urartu ).
DNA surely ranks as one of the greatest if not the greatest discovery of all time?
And recently work on DNA shows that the Neanderthals did leave a small genetic trace in modern humans. Their differences to us more from the general adaptation to climate as for example the builds of those adapted to living in colder regions now, northern Siberians and Alaskans, than to differences of genus.
Back to Noah, how well do we understand the language and what it conveyed at the time? If those with Hebrew could take a look at this analysis and give an opinion - Noahs Flood It might help in demystifying the story from the extraordinary long years in life span to a more natural view of the history of people in the mountains of Ararat (Aratta/Urarta/Armenia).
Myrrh
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
Now we've almost collected the set of crackpot chronologists. Having had Velikovksy brought up in Dead Horses, and now Hancock up here, I wondered when someone was going to mention David Rohl.
The day one of the advocates for literal belief in Biblical prodigies and catastrophes ever cites a modern archaeologist* who hasn't been caught cooking the books or ignoring dating evidence to suit, I will fall off my seat with shock.
cheers,
L.
* The other tactic is to cite more reputable people who are massively out of date, as if they were still authorities.
PS. Johnny S, no I don't assume that, but it would be a long off-topic answer about information revolutions, manuscript/print/oral cultures. To give a quick and dirty answer, a high-status 1st century person with access to imperial bureaucracy and good libraries could know way more about the Roman world than any modern archaeologist, but they wouldn't be in a position to test theories about more ancient times than their own that would involve knowledge about ecosystems, stratigraphy, archaeology, dating methods, weather systems etc, which the Roman world didn't go down the path of acquiring. Different horses for different courses, I might trust them on aqueduct technology but not on determining whether there had or had not been a global flood.
[ 28. May 2010, 19:49: Message edited by: Louise ]
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Myrrh
Shipmate
# 11483
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Posted
If that was directed at me?
I mentioned Rohl specifically for the work he's done expanding on Reginald Walker's explorations re the location of the biblical garden of eden.
There is nothing more irritating in these discussions than having posts taken out of context. If you want to argue about Rohl's Egyptian chronology and whether or not he's a dumbass then he has a website where you can do this, it is irrelevant to the chronology I'm presenting here. So is lumping all of Hancock as an objection, he's matured quite a lot over the years, which he's the first to admit..
I also think those who dismiss tradition without rationalising that descriptions such as 'there was a destructive fiery dragon in the sky' can actually represent a physical phenomenon, puts people in the mindset of Solon before instruction, somewhat childish. That we can now describe these as comets or asteroids or meteors, we're now able to differentiate between the different states and make up of fiery dragons, doesn't mean that we are more intelligent, but as Solon learned around 500BC, that myth or some story about a god can represent a known observed event and consequence.
Myrrh
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
There is nothing more irritating in these discussions than having posts taken out of context. If you want to argue about Rohl's Egyptian chronology and whether or not he's a dumbass then he has a website where you can do this, it is irrelevant to the chronology I'm presenting here. So is lumping all of Hancock as an objection, he's matured quite a lot over the years, which he's the first to admit..
Rohl and Hancock are as reputable archaeologically as Nigerian princes who email to say they're going to put millions in your bank account. Now if you could cite someone reputable who agrees with Rohl's argument in this case and who has published to the effect that contrary to Rohl's usual track record, this might be worth looking at, that would be different.
If you want me to believe he's a reformed character, then please do show me a review in a proper archaeology journal of how this book stands up to scrutiny - preferably by an archaeologist who hasn't been caught dynasty-fiddling and preferably by someone who's basing his findings on something a bit better than a 24 year old article in "Still Trowelling" - the information sheet of Ancient History Book Club'*
L.
*as it turned out to be, in the very few references I could find to this stunningly obscure publication from the 1980s.
quote:
In the information sheet STILL TROWELLING no.8, issued by the Ancient History Book Club, there is a short piece by R. A. Walker on the possible geographical origins of the Greek Olympians as argued from etymological considerations of the names of Zeus and his immediate family. He concludes that Hephaestus, at least, originated in the Caucasus.
[ 28. May 2010, 22:07: Message edited by: Louise ]
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Johnny S
Shipmate
# 12581
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Louise:
Different horses for different courses, I might trust them on aqueduct technology but not on determining whether there had or had not been a global flood.
Sure, I wasn't talking about the flood, but more interested in the general issues of reading ancient material.
It is probably a tangent though.
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
By the way, does anyone have an explanation for the occasional man made artifacts found in coal seams?
I've never heard of such a thing - what's your source?
Look
What do you make of it?
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
Looks to me like wishful thinking by people who need the Bible to be literally 'true' because their faith depends on it.
...
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Myrrh
Shipmate
# 11483
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Louise:
quote:
Originally posted by Myrrh:
There is nothing more irritating in these discussions than having posts taken out of context. If you want to argue about Rohl's Egyptian chronology and whether or not he's a dumbass then he has a website where you can do this, it is irrelevant to the chronology I'm presenting here. So is lumping all of Hancock as an objection, he's matured quite a lot over the years, which he's the first to admit..
Rohl and Hancock are as reputable archaeologically as Nigerian princes who email to say they're going to put millions in your bank account. Now if you could cite someone reputable who agrees with Rohl's argument in this case and who has published to the effect that contrary to Rohl's usual track record, this might be worth looking at, that would be different.
I am under no obligation to provide anything for you, and certainly under no inclination to do so for those unwilling to invest any thinking time for themselves in any references I provide and especially not for those who themselves require an official rubber stamp of approval from sources they alone deem worthy of bestowing sanction. The Scablands scenario, for example, was officially declared by the weight of all geology's supposed experts to be impossible, stuck as they were in their rigid expert opinion of themselves - they were proved wrong. By your light you would have followed their flawed understanding for forty years criticising any who dared contradict them with the same unsubstantiated and unthinking claim to represent 'the truth' as you have shown here.
quote:
If you want me to believe he's a reformed character, then please do show me a review in a proper archaeology journal of how this book stands up to scrutiny - preferably by an archaeologist who hasn't been caught dynasty-fiddling and preferably by someone who's basing his findings on something a bit better than a 24 year old article in "Still Trowelling" - the information sheet of Ancient History Book Club'*
L.
You're so annoyed at some private gripe you have that you fail to notice firstly that I made no mention of "reformed character" re Rohl and so secondly have failed to appreciate what I did say about another.
quote:
*as it turned out to be, in the very few references I could find to this stunningly obscure publication from the 1980s.
quote:
In the information sheet STILL TROWELLING no.8, issued by the Ancient History Book Club, there is a short piece by R. A. Walker on the possible geographical origins of the Greek Olympians as argued from etymological considerations of the names of Zeus and his immediate family. He concludes that Hephaestus, at least, originated in the Caucasus.
If you can't be bothered to engage in what I am actually saying, I can't be bothered to engage further in your unproven and bigotted tangents re authoritative sources.
I provided a link to the actual subject I was referring to, which shouldn't have been beyond your capacity to consider and investigate the arguments. If you have anything to say re the actual Walker research which Rohl elaborated on on the subject I actually referred to, I'm happy to listen to you, otherwise, good bye.
Myrrh
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Saul the Apostle
Shipmate
# 13808
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
Graham Hancock is a controversial and disputed author. I would say he raises some interesting questions (about advanced pre flood societies)and tends to point to very advanced civilisations and in that broad brush stroke way i would tend to agree with him.
But wouldn't you have thought it odd that such very advanced civilisations didn't seem to have got round to building any boats until God handed the blueprints to Noah?
If you take the strict creationist viewpoint, there had been no rain (pre flood) as the earth had a 'firmament' around it, which kept it a constant ideal temperature and a water mist watered the land.
So Noah would have created a stir building a boat and hence the merriment at his handiwork.
I think that conventional science with its millions of years time spans and endless changes as to how dinosaurs died out takes as much if not more faith to believe in than a creationist view IMO.
Artifacts that seem out of place are indeed a puzzle and they don't fit into the conventional received wisdom of today . It seems to me that scientific atheism wants to squeeze a loving powerful creator God out of the picture and wishes to exalt mans intellect above its creator. Thus it has been ever so since the fall of man in Adam's day.
Saul
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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
I think that conventional science with its millions of years time spans and endless changes as to how dinosaurs died out takes as much if not more faith to believe in than a creationist view IMO.
Saul
So how
do you think that animals, birds and insects which need complex habitats and food chains survived in a soggy, muddy landscape when the waters subsided?
...
<edited because I messed up the code>
[ 29. May 2010, 12:53: Message edited by: Boogie ]
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
But wouldn't you have thought it odd that such very advanced civilisations didn't seem to have got round to building any boats until God handed the blueprints to Noah?
If you take the strict creationist viewpoint, there had been no rain (pre flood) as the earth had a 'firmament' around it, which kept it a constant ideal temperature and a water mist watered the land.
So Noah would have created a stir building a boat and hence the merriment at his handiwork.
Reasonable only if you assume it requires rain to sail a boat. Most people think the main requirement is an open body of water, which a literal reading of Genesis would say existed since the third day of creation.
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
I think that conventional science with its millions of years time spans and endless changes as to how dinosaurs died out takes as much if not more faith to believe in than a creationist view IMO.
I'm not sure what's so unreasonable about "millions of years time spans". Doesn't the fact that we can look out into the universe for several billion light years mean that the universe is several billion years old?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
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Saul the Apostle
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# 13808
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
But wouldn't you have thought it odd that such very advanced civilisations didn't seem to have got round to building any boats until God handed the blueprints to Noah?
If you take the strict creationist viewpoint, there had been no rain (pre flood) as the earth had a 'firmament' around it, which kept it a constant ideal temperature and a water mist watered the land.
So Noah would have created a stir building a boat and hence the merriment at his handiwork.
Reasonable only if you assume it requires rain to sail a boat. Most people think the main requirement is an open body of water, which a literal reading of Genesis would say existed since the third day of creation.
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
I think that conventional science with its millions of years time spans and endless changes as to how dinosaurs died out takes as much if not more faith to believe in than a creationist view IMO.
I'm not sure what's so unreasonable about "millions of years time spans". Doesn't the fact that we can look out into the universe for several billion light years mean that the universe is several billion years old?
Yes, like I said, my own perspective is non scientific and is based on a simple reading of Genesis. I don't put forward any pet personal theories. I've read an overview of what creationists and conventional evolutionists think.
My view is based on a straight forward reading of the Genesis account...but....heres the rider....there is so much within the account which leads to more and more (unanswerable )questions. So I am a reverend agnostic in these matters, but find my 'allegiance' towards the broad literalist interpretation of scripture and bizarre as it may sound I believe the earth is a young earth and the massive time spans as put forward by evolutionists are created because they're necessary for their beliefs.
There was in my view a worldwide (deluge/flood etc) catastrophe and this seems to have been accepted by Jesus himself and Peter as well as most of the early church and into the time of the church fathers etc.
I am not a ''militant crusading creationist'' as such, I just feel drawn towards a broad brush reading and acceptance of the Genesis account. I am not into rubbishing anyone elses view either, its just my personal prespective as a Christian (and non scientist).
There are indeed more questions than answers and there are anomalies in the evolutionist approach; the arguments are well rehearsed on either side of the 'divide'.
Saul
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"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Yes, like I said, my own perspective is non scientific and is based on a simple reading of Genesis. I don't put forward any pet personal theories. I've read an overview of what creationists and conventional evolutionists think.
My view is based on a straight forward reading of the Genesis account...but....heres the rider....there is so much within the account which leads to more and more (unanswerable )questions. So I am a reverend agnostic in these matters, but find my 'allegiance' towards the broad literalist interpretation of scripture and bizarre as it may sound I believe the earth is a young earth and the massive time spans as put forward by evolutionists are created because they're necessary for their beliefs.
There was in my view a worldwide (deluge/flood etc) catastrophe and this seems to have been accepted by Jesus himself and Peter as well as most of the early church and into the time of the church fathers etc.
I am not a ''militant crusading creationist'' as such, I just feel drawn towards a broad brush reading and acceptance of the Genesis account. I am not into rubbishing anyone elses view either, its just my personal prespective as a Christian (and non scientist).
There are indeed more questions than answers and there are anomalies in the evolutionist approach; the arguments are well rehearsed on either side of the 'divide'.
Saul
Hmmmmmm - this sounds like 'I will believe in young earth creationism as it fits what I already believe, so don't bother with any evidence as I'm not going to think about it anyway'
You seem to be closing your eyes and blocking your ears here.
My question about how those animals survived without the complex ecosystems they need remains completely ignored - and I am not in the least scientific. It's a simple straightforward impossibility that they would last long enough to breed. (even if the many predators hadn't eaten them first)
...
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
I think that conventional science with its millions of years time spans and endless changes as to how dinosaurs died out takes as much if not more faith to believe in than a creationist view IMO.
I'm not sure what's so unreasonable about "millions of years time spans". Doesn't the fact that we can look out into the universe for several billion light years mean that the universe is several billion years old?
Yes, like I said, my own perspective is non scientific and is based on a simple reading of Genesis. I don't put forward any pet personal theories. I've read an overview of what creationists and conventional evolutionists think.
My view is based on a straight forward reading of the Genesis account...but....heres the rider....there is so much within the account which leads to more and more (unanswerable) questions. So I am a reverend agnostic in these matters, but find my 'allegiance' towards the broad literalist interpretation of scripture and bizarre as it may sound I believe the earth is a young earth and the massive time spans as put forward by evolutionists are created because they're necessary for their beliefs.
I'd say you're not so much an 'agnostic' as an 'ignorantist' on these matters. The questions you refer to aren't "unanswerable", you just don't like the answers. For example, if we observe an object that's 2,500,000 light years away from us, that means the light we're observing must have left that object 2.5 million years ago. If said object is emitting light that long ago it seems reasonable to assume that it existed that long ago. You seem to find this point of data unacceptable, so you just ignore it in favor of a belief that the stars all came into being sometime after the creation of terrestrial plants a few thousand years ago.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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pjkirk
Shipmate
# 10997
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
So I am a reverend agnostic in these matters
For an agnostic, you are pretty damn sure of things.
quote:
I believe the earth is a young earth and the massive time spans as put forward by evolutionists are created because they're necessary for their beliefs.
Or they match what we see in evolutionary rates between animals, carbon dating, expansion of the universe, ice cores, etc....all things which vehemently stand against your "agnostic" well formed opinion. The closest you could come to explaining any of this is that God created a complete old planet with fossils in it (a joke the paleontologists haven't figured out yet). Speciation since then of course still contradicts the YEC view, as well as the broad genetic diversity and distribution patterns for genes, and about 10,000 other things.
quote:
There was in my view a worldwide (deluge/flood etc) catastrophe and this seems to have been accepted by Jesus himself and Peter as well as most of the early church and into the time of the church fathers etc.
You *really* need to figure out what agnostic means. And maybe actually entertain some of the evidence posted in this thread showing how a global flood could not have possibly happened.
quote:
I am not a ''militant crusading creationist'' as such, I just feel drawn towards a broad brush reading and acceptance of the Genesis account. I am not into rubbishing anyone elses view either, its just my personal prespective as a Christian (and non scientist).
Hiding behind claims of personal perspective and non-scientistism make you no less wrong.
quote:
There are indeed more questions than answers and there are anomalies in the evolutionist approach; the arguments are well rehearsed on either side of the 'divide'.
The funny thing is how one side fine-tunes their theory based on new things they find. The other side fine-tunes their theory based upon how the other side just invalidated their last theory.
ETA: hmmm....crossposted with the entire choir.
[ 29. May 2010, 15:48: Message edited by: pjkirk ]
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Dear God, I would like to file a bug report -- Randall Munroe (http://xkcd.com/258/)
Posts: 1177 | From: Swinging on a hammock, chatting with Bokonon | Registered: Feb 2006
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matthew_dixon
Shipmate
# 12278
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Posted
Okay - read the first and last pages to get myself up to speed with this topic.
Personally, I'd say I waver between 2 and 3. Certainly there's no way that the world was flooded in its entirety - simple question for that... where did all the water go? (I have been told that "geologists who claim the Grand Canyon was formed over millions of years by erosion are wrong... it was formed by Noah's Flood"!)
I just can't decide whether it's totally made up, or whether there was actually some sort of serious flood at the time in that part of the world. Apparently an ark was found on Mount Ararat in Turkey recently by some "evangelical archeologists" - take from that job title what you will!
Oh, and I have to say that I agree with kfingers on these two points...
quote:
Originally posted by kfingers:
I am sometimes quite envious of those who take the Bible at face value in a literal sense. Things must be so much easier to just do that. I respect people who will stick to their beliefs against overwhelming odds.
If you wanna believe it then that's fine. If you wanna call it history that's ok with me. Just don't go teaching it as the only way of looking at and interpreting one section of The Bible at the expense of all other points of view. That's bigotry and it annoys me.
Posts: 321 | From: Cardiff | Registered: Jan 2007
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
By the way, does anyone have an explanation for the occasional man made artifacts found in coal seams?
I've never heard of such a thing - what's your source?
Look
What do you make of it?
Sort of thing the National Enquirer might fill their back pages with. On the level of "Aliens ate my dog" and "My son turned into a sausage." Googling this stuff generally turns up the usual range of crackpots and nutjob sites, with reputable scientists ignoring it for the Ripley's rejects that it is. But eventually I found this site that does a sterling job at examining such claims made by the more out-there creationists.
While Jamat should read the whole site, he should pay most attention to the following quote from a scientist examing one of the 'artifacts in ancient rock' claims.
quote:
The stone is real, and it looks impressive to someone unfamiliar with geological processes. How could a modern artifact be stuck in Ordovician rock? The answer is that the concretion itself is not Ordovician. Minerals in solution can harden around an intrusive object dropped in a crack or simply left on the ground if the source rock (in this case, reportedly Ordovician) is chemically soluble (Cole, 1985).
And again, regarding a cast iron cup in a coal seam:
quote:
"The cup was likely dropped by a worker either inside a coal mine or in a mine's surface workings. Mineralization is common in the coal and surrounding debris of coal mines because rainwater reacts with the newly exposed minerals and produces highly mineralized solutions. Coal, sediments, and rocks are commonly cemented together in just a few years. It could easily appear that a pot cemented in such a concretion could appear superficially as if it were encased in the original coal. Or small pieces of coal, including powder, could have been recompressed around the cup by weight" (Isaac, 2005).
Thus, a person who broke open such a nodule might mistakenly conclude that it was part of the host formation, rather than a secondary product of the mining environment. This phenomena has been documented with objects as modern as soda bottles and World War II artifacts (Al-Aga, 1995; McKusick and Shinn, 1980)
[ 29. May 2010, 18:42: Message edited by: Hawk ]
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
There was in my view a worldwide (deluge/flood etc) catastrophe and this seems to have been accepted by Jesus himself and Peter as well as most of the early church and into the time of the church fathers etc.
Yup, this is exactly what I was talking about earlier concerning what's at stake for people, and why they won't listen when the academic dishonesty of folk like Hancock et al is explained. I'm always struck by the contrast between the amazingly decent, scrupulously honest people who believe literally, and the archaeological frauds who take advantage of that faith to sell books and lecture tours.
L.
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Now you need never click a Daily Mail link again! Kittenblock replaces Mail links with calming pics of tea and kittens! http://www.teaandkittens.co.uk/ Click under 'other stuff' to find it.
Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
By the way, does anyone have an explanation for the occasional man made artifacts found in coal seams?
I've never heard of such a thing - what's your source?
Look
What do you make of it?
1. There's a human face on Mars. We see what we want to see sometimes, and patterns we are used to may be gleaned out of natural formations. Jesus on your toast, anybody?
2. We know human artifacts are buried. Any number of buried artifact stories are completely irrelevant, unless you can verify that they were in untouched-by-human-hands strata that are verified to be pre-human. "I found it in my well" just doesn't cut it. Normal wells don't cut through pre-human rock.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
So Noah would have created a stir building a boat and hence the merriment at his handiwork.
Would he? Why? Were there not lakes and seas and oceans? If yes, How do we know how far inland he was? If no, how would they know it was a "boat", which they'd have no experience of at all, and not just another building? Interestingly the text doesn't call it a boat, it calls it a box.
quote:
I think that conventional science with its millions of years time spans and endless changes as to how dinosaurs died out takes as much if not more faith to believe in than a creationist view IMO.
Except of course, that the evidence supports the scientific view and not the creationist one. A minor detail, perhaps, to a creationist?
quote:
My view is based on a straight forward reading of the Genesis account...but....heres the rider....there is so much within the account which leads to more and more (unanswerable )questions. So I am a reverend agnostic in these matters, but find my 'allegiance' towards the broad literalist interpretation of scripture and bizarre as it may sound I believe the earth is a young earth and the massive time spans as put forward by evolutionists are created because they're necessary for their beliefs.
This is a simple error of historical record. By and large, scientists were dragged kicking and screaming into accepting an old world.
quote:
There are indeed more questions than answers and there are anomalies in the evolutionist approach;
Of course -- but there is a mechanism for working them out, and over time they do get worked out. Also, comparing the anomalies of current scientific knowledge with the anomalies of creationism is a ridiculous comparision. "Both sides have anomalies" is grossly misleading. It's like saying that Lydia the Tattooed Lady and my sister who has a small flower on her ankle "both have tattoos" as if that proved they both spent the same amount of time in tattoo parlours. Creationism is one big anomaly surrounded almost entirely by other anomalies. Science is a huge, verifiable edifice with anomalies around the edges. Every time an anomaly crops up, scientists shift gears and try to figure out how it fits into the system, and adjust the rest of the system accordingly. When have Creationists ever done that?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Yes, like I said, my own perspective is non scientific and is based on a simple reading of Genesis. I don't put forward any pet personal theories. I've read an overview of what creationists and conventional evolutionists think.
My view is based on a straight forward reading of the Genesis account...but....heres the rider....there is so much within the account which leads to more and more (unanswerable )questions. So I am a reverend agnostic in these matters, but find my 'allegiance' towards the broad literalist interpretation of scripture and bizarre as it may sound I believe the earth is a young earth and the massive time spans as put forward by evolutionists are created because they're necessary for their beliefs.
There was in my view a worldwide (deluge/flood etc) catastrophe and this seems to have been accepted by Jesus himself and Peter as well as most of the early church and into the time of the church fathers etc.
I am not a ''militant crusading creationist'' as such, I just feel drawn towards a broad brush reading and acceptance of the Genesis account. I am not into rubbishing anyone elses view either, its just my personal prespective as a Christian (and non scientist).
There are indeed more questions than answers and there are anomalies in the evolutionist approach; the arguments are well rehearsed on either side of the 'divide'.
Saul
Hmmmmmm - this sounds like 'I will believe in young earth creationism as it fits what I already believe, so don't bother with any evidence as I'm not going to think about it anyway'
You seem to be closing your eyes and blocking your ears here.
My question about how those animals survived without the complex ecosystems they need remains completely ignored - and I am not in the least scientific. It's a simple straightforward impossibility that they would last long enough to breed. (even if the many predators hadn't eaten them first)
...
I think you're straining at a gnat here.
Noah stayed inside his ship for quite a long time after the rain stopped. He did not leave it until receiving divine sanction to do so.. Well, you wouldn't would you; what if it started raining again?
The dove came back with a fresh olive branch. That is proof don't you think that the eco system had begun to recover?
Saul the Apostle is right about this stuff to my mind. One needs to bring a humble mind to scripture, very hard for most of us to do that but God states that he resists the proud.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
By the way, does anyone have an explanation for the occasional man made artifacts found in coal seams?
I've never heard of such a thing - what's your source?
Look
What do you make of it?
1. There's a human face on Mars. We see what we want to see sometimes, and patterns we are used to may be gleaned out of natural formations. Jesus on your toast, anybody?
2. We know human artifacts are buried. Any number of buried artifact stories are completely irrelevant, unless you can verify that they were in untouched-by-human-hands strata that are verified to be pre-human. "I found it in my well" just doesn't cut it. Normal wells don't cut through pre-human rock.
You forgot to say there was a man in the moon.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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pjkirk
Shipmate
# 10997
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
One needs to bring a humble mind to scripture, very hard for most of us to do that but God states that he resists the proud.
If humility means needing to intellectually rape yourself daily to explain things around you, then let me have nothing to do with your god.
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Dear God, I would like to file a bug report -- Randall Munroe (http://xkcd.com/258/)
Posts: 1177 | From: Swinging on a hammock, chatting with Bokonon | Registered: Feb 2006
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
Jamat,
If we're in the realms of defining 'humble' as uncritical acceptance of the literal inerrancy of one's chosen Holy Book, then there's really no point.
Some of the usual well-known chronological/archaeological frauds have been put forward, but they turn out just window dressing. Their dodgy books and claims are not the real reason for the literal belief in the flood that's being held - which probably ultimately derives from Christology.
The sad thing is that the association of belief in the credibility of Jesus with well-known and easily disproved frauds can actually end up putting Jesus in that category for a lot of people. Instead of elevating the Bible, this approach actually ends up dragging it down to the level of the 'God was a Spaceman' 'Secrets of Atlantis' 'Holy Blood and Holy Grail' type books to be found in the New Age/Alternative history remainder bin.
L.
[ 30. May 2010, 01:39: Message edited by: Louise ]
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Now you need never click a Daily Mail link again! Kittenblock replaces Mail links with calming pics of tea and kittens! http://www.teaandkittens.co.uk/ Click under 'other stuff' to find it.
Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
It's perfectly consistent to say "I believe in creationism because I don't believe science is a reliable way of knowing the world--I rely exclusively on scripture." What's not consistent (or even intellectually honest) is to say "I believe science is a reliable way of knowing the world, except when it contradicts scripture as I choose to interpret it (that is, it contradicts the cosmological folklore of the ancient Hebrews)." Though both positions make reasonable discussion impossible.
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
Posts: 6114 | From: PDX | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
You forgot to say there was a man in the moon.
If this shows your ability to engage in rational discussion, no wonder you believe in a literal flood.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Janine
The Endless Simmer
# 3337
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Posted
I believe in one. The same way I believe you exist, Mousethief. As my Cajun family would say, English on their tongues and French in their heads, "by the hardest".
Posts: 13788 | From: Below the Bible Belt | Registered: Sep 2002
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
quote:
Yes, like I said, my own perspective is non scientific and is based on a simple reading of Genesis. I don't put forward any pet personal theories. I've read an overview of what creationists and conventional evolutionists think.
My view is based on a straight forward reading of the Genesis account...but....heres the rider....there is so much within the account which leads to more and more (unanswerable )questions. So I am a reverend agnostic in these matters, but find my 'allegiance' towards the broad literalist interpretation of scripture and bizarre as it may sound I believe the earth is a young earth and the massive time spans as put forward by evolutionists are created because they're necessary for their beliefs.
There was in my view a worldwide (deluge/flood etc) catastrophe and this seems to have been accepted by Jesus himself and Peter as well as most of the early church and into the time of the church fathers etc.
I am not a ''militant crusading creationist'' as such, I just feel drawn towards a broad brush reading and acceptance of the Genesis account. I am not into rubbishing anyone elses view either, its just my personal prespective as a Christian (and non scientist).
There are indeed more questions than answers and there are anomalies in the evolutionist approach; the arguments are well rehearsed on either side of the 'divide'.
Saul
Hmmmmmm - this sounds like 'I will believe in young earth creationism as it fits what I already believe, so don't bother with any evidence as I'm not going to think about it anyway'
You seem to be closing your eyes and blocking your ears here.
My question about how those animals survived without the complex ecosystems they need remains completely ignored - and I am not in the least scientific. It's a simple straightforward impossibility that they would last long enough to breed. (even if the many predators hadn't eaten them first)
...
I think you're straining at a gnat here.
Noah stayed inside his ship for quite a long time after the rain stopped. He did not leave it until receiving divine sanction to do so.. Well, you wouldn't would you; what if it started raining again?
The dove came back with a fresh olive branch. That is proof don't you think that the eco system had begun to recover?
Saul the Apostle is right about this stuff to my mind. One needs to bring a humble mind to scripture, very hard for most of us to do that but God states that he resists the proud.
My humility or otherwise have nothing to do with my argument. Olive branch or not, drowned insects don't just 'recover' and plants won't survive (even without being under water for 40 days) without pollinating insects.
...
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Well, this thread has been given a good run in Purgatory, but has now moved inexorably into the DH territories of inerrancy and evolution/YEC creationism. So, with the agreement of the Hosts there, it's now going to Dead Horses.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
You forgot to say there was a man in the moon.
If this shows your ability to engage in rational discussion, no wonder you believe in a literal flood.
Looked in the mirror lately old chap?
A car driving on the road helps me believe in the flood. So does the gulf oil spill. Fossil fuel and all that. Lots of it..
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Looked in the mirror lately old chap?
Every day. More bags under my eyes, more grey hairs in my beard, fewer hairs on my head. But that head is never in the sand about the verifiable facts about the history of our planet.
I came up with arguments in the form of counterexamples, etc., to what you said. You replied flippantly. Sorry, but there is no parity there in our debating style. "Look in the mirror" implies you think there is. Maybe you can explain how flippancy is the same thing as rational argument? You can't possibly think it is. But if you do it explains why you think science is on a par with a post-enlightenment hermeneutic of hyper-literal biblical interpretation.
[ 31. May 2010, 08:03: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
One needs to bring a humble mind to scripture, very hard for most of us to do that but God states that he resists the proud.
And that raises the question: what is humble and what is proud.
quote:
The Bible is telling us nonsense or all the smart asses are.
Is thinking that all the world's biologists and physicists are "smart asses" a sign of humility? Is it what a humble person would do? Or is it not a sign of pride?
Is creationism motivated by the humble desire to learn from God, or is it motivated by the desire to look down on scientists, the pride of thinking that one knows better, and the pleasure of thinking of them as "smart asses"?
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Saul the Apostle:
There was in my view a worldwide (deluge/flood etc) catastrophe and this seems to have been accepted by Jesus himself and Peter as well as most of the early church and into the time of the church fathers etc.
As I said earlier, in exactly the same way "seems to have been accepted by Jesus himself" that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds.
Jesus no more meant his statements about the flood as contributions to geology than he meant his statement about mustard seeds as a contribution to botany.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
One needs to bring a humble mind to scripture, very hard for most of us to do that but God states that he resists the proud.
And that raises the question: what is humble and what is proud.
quote:
The Bible is telling us nonsense or all the smart asses are.
Is thinking that all the world's biologists and physicists are "smart asses" a sign of humility? Is it what a humble person would do? Or is it not a sign of pride?
Is creationism motivated by the humble desire to learn from God, or is it motivated by the desire to look down on scientists, the pride of thinking that one knows better, and the pleasure of thinking of them as "smart asses"?
My flippancy is a response to your ad hominem comments MT. I do not wish to antagoniize you personally so I choose to compare a face on Mars to the man in the moon. (My mirror tells me sad grey stories too.)
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
But the man in the moon and the face on mars show the same thing: that people are prepared to see what's not there and persist in stubbornly believing it even when disproven.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
I wonder if belief in a literal flood changes people's perception of environmental issues.
If one thought God could 'make it all right again' in a flash - would they care what they did to the planet?
Jamat - do you also believe that there were no rainbows pre flood and that God caused them to happen afterwards. If so the laws of physics must have changed too.
If God changed stuff so fundamentally then, why doesn't he do so now?
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
That was kind of my point on the "Where the f*** is he now?" thread but I got shouted down.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But the man in the moon and the face on mars show the same thing: that people are prepared to see what's not there and persist in stubbornly believing it even when disproven.
But you pit your opinion against scripture. It is simply not true that the flood is disproven.
The issue is what the evidence points to neh? We have ice ages, extinctions and vast reserves of vegetable matter. We have fossils that each side claims as evidence for their case. The issue cannot be established beyond doubt. Vast amounts of time are disputed by one side and insisted upon by the other. A comet has been mentioned ..pure speculation. Burial grounds and glaciation are explicable in terms of flood. Sure we don't have it all tied down despite extreme claims on both side of the argument.
The Bible has never let me down in any way over many years. it has been exactly what the Lord says it is ..to me. A lamp to the feet and a light to the path. It says there was a flood.I think, therefore, there was.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Jamat - do you also believe that there were no rainbows pre flood and that God caused them to happen afterwards. If so the laws of physics must have changed too.
I do not know. I am superstitious about rainbows though. When I see one I always feel privileged and sort of special. 'Thank you God..you said you won't do it again.'
I do know that there is a bit more to them than the prismatic effects of light through water. Quite a few ducks have to be in a row.. I've often wondered why there is one inside another.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
One needs to bring a humble mind to scripture, very hard for most of us to do that but God states that he resists the proud.
And that raises the question: what is humble and what is proud.
quote:
The Bible is telling us nonsense or all the smart asses are.
Is thinking that all the world's biologists and physicists are "smart asses" a sign of humility? Is it what a humble person would do? Or is it not a sign of pride?
Is creationism motivated by the humble desire to learn from God, or is it motivated by the desire to look down on scientists, the pride of thinking that one knows better, and the pleasure of thinking of them as "smart asses"?
Apologies for replying to MT on the end of your post Dafyd. A mistake.
Certainly not all smart people are 'smart asses'. I apologise for offence caused. Romans 1 covers the case really."Professing wisdom, they became fools.."
The issue is about agenda. if you want to use knowledge as a weapon agaist God, the Bible has worse names than 'smart ass' for you.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
It is simply not true that the flood is disproven.
Well, that depends a bit on what is meant by "flood" in that context.
If you mean an event that resulted in the inundation of the land surface, to sufficient depth to cover at least the higher foothills of mountains, for several weeks by act of divine intervention such that there is no evidence of such an event in the geological record (or, for example, the genetic record of living species) then, of course, such an event can't be disproven. The lack of evidence for such an event is part of the event.
On the other hand, if you have the same inundation event but want to claim that there was no special action by God to cover up the evidence then there's no real option but to declare it disproven. There's no way that such an event could happen without leaving evidence.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
But you pit your opinion against scripture.
No. I pit the evidence of our senses and the best understanding our God-given intelligence is able to provide, against YOUR INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. Your problem is confounding the two.
[ 02. June 2010, 14:47: Message edited by: mousethief ]
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
Jamat - do you also believe that there were no rainbows pre flood and that God caused them to happen afterwards. If so the laws of physics must have changed too.
I do not know. I am superstitious about rainbows though. When I see one I always feel privileged and sort of special. 'Thank you God..you said you won't do it again.'
The idea that God would do it in the first place (wipe out all but a few people because they weren't perfect) is simply not believable.
Even in the story Noah turns out not to be perfect anyway - so did God get his character wrong?
None of it adds up, scientifically or morally. If God arbitrarily wiped out people then I wouldn't trust any 'rainbow promises' now. It would be like an evil mass murderer promising not to do it again.
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
It wouldn't be like it. It would be it.
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Rex Monday
None but a blockhead
# 2569
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Posted
I wondered how long this thread would take to get to DH...
The whole business of OOPAs - Out Of Place Artifacts - is endlessly amusing. It should go without saying that none of the claimed anachronistic objects found in coal, rock or other ancient surroundings have survived any sort of critical examination - when they've been subjected to any. Lots vanish or end up in the custody of people who refuse to show them.
One of my favourites is the Coso Artifact, which was claimed to be an artificial metal object embedded in a geode that was 'at least 500,000 years old'. The owners of this strange concatenation made the mistake of allowing it to be X-rayed: after some spirited research, it turned out to be (most probably) a 1920s spark plug. The exact model was identified by spark plug collectors.
Googling for "Man as old as coal" is also worthwhile.
R
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I am largely against organised religion, which is why I am so fond of the C of E.
Posts: 514 | From: Gin Lane | Registered: Mar 2002
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