No, I didn’t watch Bill Nye dissect Ken Ham in the science vs. creationism debate. I share with many other science-loving people a conviction that “debating” creationists is wholly irrelevant, and tends only to build the glory of the creationists who cannot manage to set up a single scientific observation or experiment to provide evidence for creationism, but can stand on a stage and crack bad jokes and lie, against a mumbling scientist.
But I have looked at some of the commentary, and some of Nye’s remarks and rebuttals. Nye did very well.
Nye tended to develop clear, non-scientific explanations for the issues. Ham and creationists aren’t ready for that.
In that vein, J. Rehling tweeted this astonishingly clear explanation for why it’s just impossible to “believe” that the fabled ark of Noah could carry even most of the species alive, in one boat (and, mind you, the San Diego Zoo is neither the world’s largest collection of species on display in a zoo, nor displaying a significant percentage of all species):
http://twitter.com/JRehling/status/430875205917876224
Two pictures that tell the story.
How big was Noah’s Ark? Not big enough, especially compared to the San Diego Zoo and the USS Nimitz.
San Diego Zoo and USS Nimitz, the largest ship in the U.S. Navy; clearly, no ark built by Noah could have been big enough to carry all land animals. Image mashup by JRehling
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
“what Scripture has always said to be true”
Oh? So its just fine to slaughter babies, according to your Bible, right?
It’s always right!
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This study was in the news yesterday. It illustrates what the Bible has been saying for 2,000 years – that man knows right from wrong from the beginning. For ages, behaviorists have said that morals are derived from environment or education, but this study from Yale demonstrates what Scripture has always said to be true.
I think this is a great example of human study catching up to what God said all along. This happens often.
While I don’t know all of the answers on everything Scripture says to be true, there are countless stories such as this where what is common knowledge disagrees with Scripture and then conventional wisdom is what changes – not Scripture. All that to say is that no matter the subject, even if it is Noah’s ark, I do have faith that once again, God will prove to be right. Attacks on various aspects of Scripture are nothing new. For one example, in the 19th century, scoffers mocked at the Bible’s recording of the Hittites. Until archaeologists found them. We mock the Bible’s view on something so complex as that of infant morality and the existence of knowing right from wrong. We mock, until now when the Bible is demonstrably correct. What else might this little book eventually prove to be right about? A flood perchance?
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/13/living/what-babies-know-anderson-cooper-parents/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
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James said, “Those other intellectual Christians would take issue with you declaring that the bible is the literal and inerrant Word of God. Those other intellectual Christians would take issue with you thinking evidence means “the Bible said so”
Lewis, whose views on Scripture, evolution, etc. were constantly evolving (pun intended) the longer he was a Christian, put this little hymn to evolution together:
Lead us, Evolution, lead us
Up the future’s endless stair:
Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us
For stagnation is despair:
Groping, guessing, yet progressing,
Lead us nobody knows where.
I have many Christians I respect who to some degree tried to reconcile both creation/evolution in their finite minds. C.S. Lewis was one such character. Considering he began as a faithful atheist, I’d say he came a long ways in his views of Scripture and the entirety of his world view. He looked at accounts such as Jonah as a possible form of parable, though he admitted he was no theologian.
C.S. Lewis was a good Anglican. His views on Scripture reflected those sentiments. Doesn’t mean I don’t hold him in the highest respect, even though I disagree with him on the extent of Scripture’s inerrent qualities.
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Ed said, “There are more reasons in heaven and Earth than we have found, but that does not mean they don’t exist, can’t be found and can’t be understood.”
Wow. The writers of the 3rd Humanist Manifesto would be proud of you, Ed. Dawkins would proud as well. As I said before, everyone has faith. Like a good humanist, you, James, and Flag have demonstrated your faith in humanity.
Good luck with that. Humans are capable of some pretty amazing things to be sure. Great feats! And great evils. Many evils in the name of God. Many more in the name of humanity. If the understanding of humanity is so great, tell me…if you can, where does evil come from? Why do we have death? Why do we have life? Why do we have consciousness and where does it come from? How did the laws of the universe come to be with such consistency with out the aid of any higher power? You have demonstrated your faith in naturalism that denies the involvement of any higher power through the course of history.
Flag says, “The universe exists on reason.” Why is that? Why does it not exist on feeling? Shoot, the existence of reason is a compelling argument for that intelligence coming from somewhere! Where did this reason come from I ask you? Yet for all their reasoning, human minds are finite. Existentialism can only go so far.
Beyond this, humans are evil. Don’t believe me? Then demonstrate how you have no evil inside of you – including your thoughts. You would be the first. We cannot even eradicate evil in our own selves let alone purge the earth of wrongs. If you’re looking for examples, look at the front page of any newspaper on any given day. Sure, there are great feats that humans do – but there are great evils on a daily basis. Shoot – we even commit evil when we KNOW the right course of action! So even if we educate people with infinite knowledge, we still have human choice which often willfully chooses evil when they know better. You have placed your faith in something evil that has no hope of eradicating that evil – because it cannot even understand what it is or where it comes from without invoking God. And even if when we do understand right and wrong…we like the wrong and choose it over good over and over again. If you disagree and believe that humans always choose what is good, look no further than the existence of McDonalds to prove my point. :-)
What is really ironic about this discussion is that you all are so concerned about God being called a liar when you have placed your faith in human liars, even in the scientific community. According to the APA, 2% of scientists openly admit to fudging their research. 14 percent of scientists admit that they have witnessed their colleagues doing the same. According to an article in Nature in 2005, the estimate is that some 33% of scientists fudge their research for a myriad of reasons – like federal funding.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/07-08/misconduct.aspx
Sorry boys, but even though I agree that reason is how the universe is governed, we as instruments are not capable of either totally understanding that reason, or governing our lives accordingly. It’s not reason I question – it is the human instrument that perceives that reason.That’s why God says when His ways and judgments are challenged, “By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar…” Romans 3:4. I serve a God who says, ““Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way,and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55:5-9. I serve a God who honestly tells me that there are things that I just won’t understand because they have not been revealed by God. He says, ““The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.” – Deuteronomy 29:29.
I think C.S. Lewis sums it up better than anything I could say, “Let us go back to the question of Logic. I have tried to show that you reach a self-contradiction if you say that logical inference is, in principle, invalid. On the other hand, nothing is more obvious than that we frequently make false inferences: from ignorance of some of the factors involved, from inattention, from inefficiencies in the system of symbols (linguistic or otherwise) which we are using, from the secret influence of our unconscious wishes or fears. We are therefore driven to combine a steadfast faith in inference as such with a wholesome scepticism about each particular instance of inference in the mind of a human thinker. As I have said, there is no such thing (strictly speaking) as human reason: but there is emphatically such a thing as human thought–in other words, the various specifically human conceptions of Reason, failures of complete rationality, which arise in a wishful and lazy human mind utilizing a tired human brain. The difference between acknowledging this and being sceptical about Reason itself, is enormous. For in the one case we should be saying that reality contradicts Reason, whereas now we are only saying that total Reason–cosmic or super-cosmic Reason–corrects human imperfections of Reason. Now correction is not the same as mere contradiction. When your false reasoning is corrected you ‘see the mistakes’: the true reasoning thus takes up into itself whatever was already rational in your original thought. You are not moved into a totally new world; you are given more and purer of what you already had in a small quantity and badly mixed with foreign elements. To say that Reason is objective is to say that all our false reasonings could in principle be corrected by more Reason. I have to add ‘in principle’ because, of course, the reasoning necessary to give us absolute truth about the whole universe might be (indeed, certainly would be) too complicated for any human mind to hold it all together or even to keep on attending. But that, again, would be a defect in the human instrument, not in Reason. De Futilitate, paragraph 25
Lewis was a master at demonstrating the flaws in naturalism and humanism – especially having been one who carried those labels himself. What a brilliant instrument of interpreting reason! Lewis would pass that glory to God who gave him the lens to interpret the data.
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To quote: C.S. Lewis and other intellectual Christians as far back as Tertullian would take issue with you calling their faith the absence of all reason.
Those other intellectual Christians would take issue with you declaring that the bible is the literal and inerrant Word of God. Those other intellectual Christians would take issue with you thinking evidence means “the Bible said so”
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Next Joe will be claiming that Abe Lincoln was a vampire hunter. After all….there’s a movie where he was and after all Abe Lincoln was real….
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Yeah ed. They were asked what was the purpose of evolution and creationism and Hamm said that the purpose of creationism is to bring kids to Christ. I had to do a sys restore on my harddrives so lost the quote and now trying to find it.
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To quote: “Many of the main characters in Scripture have been validated as real people by outside evidence, Flag”
So because Abe Lincoln was real he actually said “As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”
what scientifically verifiable evidence independent of the Bible or any religious belief do you have that Noah’s flood happened? What scientifically verifiable evidence independent of the Bible or any religious belief do you have that 1: two of every species can fit on a boat one third the size of our aicraft carriers, 2: that the boat could carry enough food and water and that 3: you can repopulate every species with just two members of that species.
Btw..as much as I agree with that quote I attributed to Lincoln, Joe…he didn’t really say it.
At some point here you’re going to have to accept the fact that the Bible is sometimes wrong. And don’t go claiming it isn’t because if I start asking you if you’ve killed your parents because your mother left the house during her period and that your father touched your mother’s bed during her period as the Bible commands you’re going to come up with some way of “explaining” why that isn’t applicable now.
Just because person A existed doesn’t necessarily mean everything attributed to that real person actually happened or that person actually said those things.
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I don’t follow Ham. Did he say that when he was crushed in the debate with Bill Nye?
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On a side but related note, Ed, you don’t happen to have the quote of Ken Hamm where he specifically said the sole purpose of creationism is to “bring kids to Jesus Christ”?
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Which is an interesting doorway to the realization that creationism ultimately rejects its own supposed foundations.
One of the great glories of science is the pursuit of causes for the effects we see. Science is the greatest cause-effect search going.
Creationists claim that “everything must have a maker,” which is a crude, anthropomorphized way of saying effects must have causes.
Creationists then must start denial early on. When science finds a cause that is not “the direct hand of God” for some effect, especially an effect previously thought to be somehow magical, and therefore done by gods or sprites or elves, creationists jump on the scientists, the messengers, and claim they have interpreted things incorrectly.
Not only that, but some causes simply cannot be known accurately, they declare. Goddidit is good enough shorthand.
Star formation? Not gravity and chemistry, but goddidit. Planet foromation? Again, goddidit. Oceans, atmosphere, weather, migration of continents, rise of mountains, erosion . . . yep, goddidit.
Life? Goddidit. Disease? Cancer? Drought and starvation? Goddiditol.
So, the creationists say, just sit back and enjoy it, Don’t fight, you’ll only make the perpetrator angry.
There are more reasons in heaven and Earth than we have found, but that does not mean they don’t exist, can’t be found and can’t be understood.
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Men manifest faith where they are unable to reason.
Men believed the moon and planets moved about the sky by the hand of God or on the back of a cosmic turtle. When men learned that gravity was the force, faith evaporated as the explanation.
When men reason, they need no faith.
The Universe exists on reason, not faith.
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Everyone has faith.
Christianity distinguished itself originally by saying faith was necessary — not someone else’s sword, and especially not any force of law.
Christianity distinguished itself also by using as its witness scripture written by the faithful, not by a god, and not dictated by any supernatural being. In other words, it was the testimony of the faithful.
Fundamentalism turns Christianity on its head with claims that the Bible is, itself divine (one of the fundamental points of departure for Abraham was God’s instruction that such idols indicated a divorce from God; did you just forget that, or do you reject those teacings?), and then by saying faith is NOT required, because “there is evidence.” Especially that latter belief is a modern remodeling, a reaction to the rise of scientific evidence that some faithfaul, apparently of weak faith, took to challenge their faith.
Creationism has its logic, but it’s logic used as a substitute for evidence, and a substitute for faith. On those two grounds I reject it. It’s contrary to Christianity.
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Unless you have reasonable faith and can point to faith as the only reasonable choice. Again…everyone has faith. Some faith is pure fideism where you check your brain at the door. C.S. Lewis and other intellectual Christians as far back as Tertullian would take issue with you calling their faith the absence of all reason.
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“Many of the main characters in Scripture have been validated as real people by outside evidence, Flag”
Yep, there was a real Hitler in Saving Ryan, and real Eisenhower, and commanders all referenced in the movie too. Doesn’t make the characters of Ryan, et al nor their exploits “true”.
As you point, your myth-book is the only record – so it is no record at all, no more than the movie is the “only record” of Ryan (and hence according to your argument, must be real).
There is no such thing as “intellect” and “faith” together. One is the opposite of the other. Faith is holding a believe UNSUPPORTED by reason. If you had reason to support your position, you don’t need to appeal to faith.
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Black Flag said, “Again, you appeal to the same nonsense that because “Saving Private Ryan” was a story about WW2, the characters and their events must be true too.”
Many of the main characters in Scripture have been validated as real people by outside evidence, Flag. Yet the Bible is often our only record of what those real people did. So I ask you, what evidence is there that after the writers of the Bible meticulously work to get names, ancestors, dates, places, locations, etc. all correct, that they then fudged the particulars? Especially when the Bible is just as reliable than many of the sources that we use as standard for our history?
I simply don’t have time to go into all the arguments. If, however, you are a skeptic but are open to an intellectually honest discussion on faith in the God of the Bible from a non-young earth creationist perspective, I would recommend “The Reason for God” by Tim Keller of New York. Keller reminds me a lot of C.S. Lewis in that he looks at the subject from an intellectual perspective by directly addressing the claims of skeptics. Something, I think, you would enjoy.
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Flag said, “When a man declares “faith”, it means he has abandoned reason.”
On the contrary, the man who declares “faith” is the one being honest. There is not a person alive or dead who has not placed their faith in something or someone. In your case, you seem to be declaring your faith in your own reasoning and intellect. Good luck with that…
How many times have I asked rationalists to say “silk” five times fast and then ask them what cows drink? Cows drink water, not milk! If that doesn’t get them, I have asked, “Say ‘shop’ five times fast. What do you do when you come to a green light?” The answer is go, but ordinarily I get “stop.” Ironic to this discussion, it is usually pretty easy to get people when you ask, “how many kinds of animals did Moses bring on the ark?” The answer is zero because it was Noah, but man – people love to argue that point with me. :-)
These are cheep word games, yet over and over they demonstrate that the human mind is capable of being wrong. Your logic in trusting your own brain power would be more compelling if it weren’t so blasted easy to prove that we have a very limited intellect.
Beyond even this, why would I trust the morality of people who have evil within themselves? When through our reasoning and logic you solve the problem of evil, then get back to me. However, through the past 3,500 years of recorded history, there has been less than one collective year that does not record warfare somewhere on the planet. Murder, rape, domestic violence, theft, lying, etc. etc. etc. I am at least honest with myself in knowing that I am guilty of evil and cannot eradicate it from myself. How about you? You guilty of any wrong in the past decade at all? If you yourself led yourself astray to do something obviously wrong, why would you trust your intellect to always lead you right?
No “flag”, the strength of our own reasoning will not do the job. Ironically, it is intellectually stunted for you to say it does.
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And no, Joe, the hypocrisy is yours. You claim God created the world but deny the evidence of that world when it conflicts with your interpretation of a human written book. Since I don’t claim the bible is the literal and inerrant word of God I’m engaging in no such hypocrisy. The fact that there was debate on which books would be in the bible, the fact that the bible is different between sects of Christianity, the fact that different sects of Christianity exist is proof that the Bible is not the literal and inerrant Word of God.
ANd no I am not putting my intelligence above God’s because God did not write the Bible.
I think God knows the wording and order of the ten commandments in His mind and yet there are three versions of the commandments in the Bible. God would know that two of every species can’t fit on a small wooden boat like the ark. God would know that two of an species is not enough genetic breadth to repopulate the species.
ANd yet you sit there saying God, despite the facts of reality, said those things. The only conclusion, Joe, is that you think God is either a fool or a liar.
The hypocrisy is yours because you cling to human words so strongly to make up for the fact that your faith is so weak.
I’m catholic, child, we know the history of the Bible better than you evangelicals simply because we don’t delude ourselves on where the Bible came from. After all…we were instrumental in creating it and putting it together.
If we couldn’t build a ship large enough to house two of every species today as well as the food and water necessary then claiming that they did so back then at a time of very simple technology is absolutely flat out ludicrous. saying that doesn’t make me less of a Christian..it makes me more of one because it means I value the truth.
You are less of one because you value your lies and delusions over the truth.
That and there is no way to translate from language to language to language to language without changes being made. So how exactly do you know what the bible texts said in their original languages? for all you know in the original language…noah’s flood simply was never described as world wide.
Sorry, waving your hand and saying ‘its true because the bible said so’ is nothing but a logical fallacy.
Attack my faith all you want, Joe, but you will get nowhere with that tactic. I’m not the one calling God a liar…. you are.
And you saying God wrote the Bible is not actually proof that God did.
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For the last time, Joe, God is not the author of the Bible. That entire position is nothing but calling God a liar and a fool
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First off, there’s more then 50000 species on the planet…remember you creationists dont accept evolution so you can’t fall back on that. secondly..its your claim that the ark could. So therefor the burden is yours to prove, not mine to disprove it.
As for that bit about bowing..yeah that’s called ‘hand waving’ and it means you’re admitting you don’t know how but want to conjure a cheap parlor trick in order to obfuscate. If you can’t do anything but fall back on ‘the bible says so’ you’re being blatantly dishonest
Nor have you explained how two of every animal gas enough genetic breadth to repopulate the species.
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Again, you appeal to the same nonsense that because “Saving Private Ryan” was a story about WW2, the characters and their events must be true too.
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Indeed.
When a man declares “faith”, it means he has abandoned reason.
He wishes to believe in a tale that reason and fact have tossed aside. His only refuge becomes “faith”, that no matter what fact or reason, he will ignore that and hold to his fairy tale.
Indeed, the more reason and the more fact presented against him, the stronger he seizes his faith as a demonstration that his faith “gets stronger”.
This is why religion is so destructive. It appeals to the irrational and abandons reason and facts. When men abandon such things, human disaster is not far off.
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James said, “And yet there you sit, Joe, for all your intelligence, refusing to think. Even the Bible says not to believe everything you read or are told. Is your faith so weak that you can’t even dare to question it?”
For all your intelligence James, you have yet to demonstrate how being able to carry over 50,000 animals and only using up 40% of the boat isn’t enough space. You gave the dimensions of the Nimitz finally, but you failed to show how it wasn’t big enough to carry enough animals. I gave you the math. Where’s your calculations that disprove the ark could carry enough animals?
My faith is is strong enough to allow me to bow my pride and my intellect before my Master.
Scripture is not my God. Yet it is God’s letter from His heart to ours. Beyond the evidence of His existence, power, and authority that are evidenced in creation, I have no other record from Him or of Him. If my wife wrote me one love letter before she went on a trip I suppose I would be accused of loving the letter rather than my wife because I would read it often and guard it as being a valued treasure from my wife. Not because I love the letter itself, but I love the giver of the letter. The same is true for Scripture. I love the Bible, not for its own sake, but because of the Giver who cared enough to reveal Himself to a rebellious people. Who cared enough to break through His natural creation to be born, to live and die in our place so that we could have life. These events He recorded in Scripture so that we might be set free from our pain and our hopelessness and bring Him glory for who He is and what He has done for us. That’s why I love Scripture – it tells me of Jesus. It tells me that God has a good plan and a purpose for this world and will one day make all things new. It tells me that there is hope. It tells me that there is life in Jesus. It tells me how I can love my fellow man, my wife, my kids, my neighbor. It tells me how to be a good employee. All these things come from God and I love Him for it. Love the giver, not just the gift.
Outside of the Bible we have no knowledge of the life, death, or resurrection of Christ. James, I say this with all the care in the world for you and desire for you to know Jesus as your Master and Lord. James, you discard the Bible so flippantly and yet call yourself a Christian. You discard the record of the life of Jesus on one hand and claim to follow Him on the other. Isn’t that the very definition of hypocrisy? Are you not elevating your own intellect above God’s by saying that even the words of Jesus are unreliable? Jesus said, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things I say?” He said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” You are claiming that we have no reliable record of what He said and no record of His will. As such, why or how can you obey His teaching? Why call Him Lord in the first place? Why believe He died and rose again? The scariest thing in the world to me is seeing a human pit his intelligence against God’s. Bow your heart and your mind to Jesus while you still have breath.
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Black Flag said, “To declare a set of books of Harry Potter are somewhat consistent with themselves, therefore, the story myth presented in Harry Potter must be some fact of reality is intellectually stunted.”
Internal consistency is vital. It’s not everything, but without it then James’ comments about translations and countless edits are valid. But they’re not valid because what we have in our hands is a faithful copy of what they had in the 1st century for the New Testament, and as early as the 5th century BC of the Old Testament. As reliable as good translations are, we don’t even need to go there because of the thousands of manuscripts in the original languages!
With James it’s more difficult though because you can demonstrate something and he acts like he didn’t even read it and continues to say the same thing without even acknowledging that you responding to what he said. So…for James, your argument against the Bible because it has undergone countless edits etc. is invalid. It is more textually reliable than any other ancient document in history. I don’t see you challenging anything Caesar wrote, even though the nearest manuscript of his Gaelic Wars is 950 years removed! No one here challenged Plato saying what he said, even though the nearest manuscript dates 1300 years after his life!
There is only a 40 year time gap from the life of Jesus to the dating of the first manuscript found. That means that even the Apostle John and possibly other Apostles were still alive, and many of the first generation Christians were alive when the oldest found manuscripts were written. Unheard of in any secular ancient texts, let alone when you compare it with other “sacred” writings.
The veracity and reliability of what was said is the question…not whether what was written was the original words.
Regarding its historicity, the Bible accurately records the names and kingdoms over over 40 different kings in ancient times. It gives names of kingdoms (the Hittites) that weren’t even externally discovered to have existed until the late 19th century! Boy how people loved to scoff when the only record of the Hittites was from the Bible. Anyway, the Bible accurately records a Roman governor’s second time being governor in the book of Luke – a fact that wasn’t known until the last few decades! Locations, events, names, dates, etc. have all been confirmed by outside archaeological authority – unparalleled in any other ancient document. Through archaeology we even know what kind of crops they planted, who they traded with, how they built their cities, etc. Even long lost cities that the Bible describes have been found and unearthed because of the accuracy of Scripture – such as Nineveh, and even Babylon itself. Kings of Israel have been confirmed by outside Mesopotamian cuneiform archives. Egypt talks of demanding tribute from Israel as early as the 13th century BC. At absolute worst, archaeology demonstrates that the Bible is historically accurate to the basic outline of the rise of the Jewish nation – demonstrating that it was not written post-Babylonian captivity, but the events of Genesis accurately portray names, places, and times that only a contemporary of the events would have known over the span of over 1,500 years and with over 40 different writers! Archaeological evidence can only go so far, but compare it with other texts like the Book of Mormon or even the problems in the Quran.
I could go on…but I think you get the point. Flag compares the Bible to Harry Potter. You would just as soon dismiss the Rosetta Stone as a child’s scribbles as dismiss the Bible as pure fiction.
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According to the bible, the ark was 135 meters long, 22 meters wide and 13 meters tall.
By comparison a nimitz class carrier is 335 meters long, the width is 75 meters and the height is 62 meters.
And you’re trying to argue that two of every animal species on the planet as well as Noah’s family all managed to fit on a wooden boat roughly the third of the size of the largest ships in our navy?
It’s time to face the music, Joe, at best Noah’s flood is talking about a small regional flood because they simply didn’t know how large the world was back then. The bible is simply wrong.
When you deny reality in favor of religious belief you are nothing but a cultist
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“ICR resolves multiple flood myths issue”
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And for the love of God, Joe, Josephus was not a first hand witness to anything Jesus said or did. He wasn’t even born yet.
The fact that there are three different versions of the ten commandments…the fact that in Judaism the ‘ten commandments’ are only the first ten of a couple hundred should show why the Bible is not perfect.
The fact that it says the earth is older then the sun should prove the bible is sometimes erroneous.
If your faith is so rigid that you refuse to ever actually think about it, question it then your faith is only one good, to borrow a metaphor, windstorm from crumbling into dust.
Those Christians who refuse to question their faith..to think about their faith are as much fanatical fundamentalists as the Taliban are.
Thomas Jefferson said ‘Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, He must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.’
And yet there you sit, Joe, for all your intelligence, refusing to think. Even the Bible says not to believe everything you read or are told. Is your faith so weak that you can’t even dare to question it?
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Easy, Joe, because the Bible is a tool and nothing more. It is nothing more then a book written by humans attempting to explain their beliefs..but one that has gone through countless edits and countless translations. It isn’t God and it isn’t Jesus. You are committing idolatry by elevating a book to the status of deityship. And what the Bible says isn’t the entirety of Christianity, Joe. At no point did Jesus tell us to not think for ourselves. And you aren’t followi g Christ…you’re following a position of lying in His name, in speaking falsehood in His name..of calling the earth that God created a lie..that God lied about the earth and what happened
You don’t follow Christ..you follow your own twisted delusions because you cant actually face the truth. We Christians are supposed to value the truth…and yet you deny it with your logical fallacies and your twisted thinking.
If your faith cant stand up to the fact that the earth and we humans are older then you want to think..if your faith cant stand up to the fact that noah’s flood is just allegory then your faith is painfully weak. You are no different then the Pharisees in the Bible who couldn’t think for themselves, who had no problem in turning a blind eye to the truth.
For a Christian to deny the evidence of the world…to deny reality as you are doing, Joe, is to deny God. Your entire position is predicated on the belief that your interpretation of the Bible gives you control of God.
Quit worshipping the Bible, Joe, it isn’t God and it isn’t Jesus. Only God and Jesus are perfect…the Bible is not. And yet you want to pretend otherwise. And you question why I call myself a Christian? Sorry, Joe, you should be questioning why you consider yourself a Christian if you want to deny the actual evidence of God’s creation in favor of your interpretation of a book.
Your circular logic and twisted delusions in the face of reality should give you pause as to the veracity of what you’re saying. If you have to go through mental hoops to explain away the inconsistencies between what the Bible says and what the actual evidence of God’s creation says…you are no more a Christian then a fly is a bird
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As for your position on slavery…congratulations…you just said Jesus engaged in an immoral act. By saying that He turned a blind eye you are saying He let an grand evil happen. So much for any claim of morality.
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To quote: So, when Jesus talked about things being from the beginning of creation and talked about Noah and the ark, every person listening to him would have understood him to mean a real time and event that had happened only a thousand years prior*****
Which you are only getting 2000 years worth of third hand that has gone through hundreds of translations and countless edits. To be blunt…you can’t prove He actually said such a thing…you’re only being told by someone who wasn’t there, wasn’t alive at the time and has gone through edit after edit and translation after translation.
If I wrote that Jesus said something…does that actually mean that Jesus said it or just that I’m saying He did?
Not even Judaism buys into the claim that the stories noahs flood story is meant literally or that Adam and eve were the first humans
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There is nothing in any work of fiction or myth that makes it a measure of “God’s” reality, Levell.
To declare a set of books of Harry Potter are somewhat consistent with themselves, therefore, the story myth presented in Harry Potter must be some fact of reality is intellectually stunted.
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So, when Jesus talked about things being from the beginning of creation and talked about Noah and the ark, every person listening to him would have understood him to mean a real time and event that had happened only a thousand years prior*****
****a few thousand years prior.
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James, Jesus said “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus did not condone slavery, but He did not deny its existence either. He treated it as it was. A reality. He came to bring freedom. Sometimes, even the most wealthy billionaire who lives in luxury is living in slavery. Sometimes even the poorest slave is the one living in freedom. Jesus’ freedom crosses all barriers and breaks down all walls.
James, I have a simple question for you. If you believe the Bible to be merely an invention of man…including what is said about and by Jesus…why (or even how) do you claim to be a Christ-follower?
If what Jesus teaches and says has no authority over your life…what you believe…what you think…what you do…what you say…how can you be a disciple? How can you say you are a follower of Jesus if you stand in judgment with the teachings of your Master?
You guys say and do all you want about following Jesus. I cast my lot with Him. His truth will be my truth. His teachings my learning. His commandments my instructions. His cares my concerns. His fate, my fate. If Jesus is wrong, then I am wrong. If He is a charlatan then I am his stooge. If He is the Savior, King, and God come in the flesh come to save me from my rebellion against God’s rule over my life…then I am free. Free indeed.
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Ed said, “Argument from crumby authority.”
Here are but two examples from the actual Talmud: R. Kattina said: “Six thousand years shall the world exist, and one [thousand, the seventh], it shall be desolate, as it is written, And the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.32 Abaye said: it will be desolate two [thousand], as it is said, After two days will he revive us: in the third day, he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.33”
Sanhedrin 97a
R. Hanan b. Tahlifa sent [word] to R. Joseph: I once met a man who possessed a scroll written in Hebrew in Assyrian characters.7 I said to him: ‘Whence has this come to thee?’ He replied, ‘I hired myself as a mercenary in the Roman army, and found it amongst the Roman archives. In it is stated that four thousand, two hundred and thirty8-one years after the creation the world will be orphaned.9 [As to the years following,] some of them will be spent in the war of the great sea monsters,10 and some in the war of Gog and Magog, and the remaining [period] will be the Messianic era, whilst the Holy One, blessed be He, will renew his world only after seven thousand years.’ R. Abba the son of Raba said: The statement was after five thousand years.
Sanhedrin 97b
Ed said, “You’re quickly crashing into the mistakes of those who “studied” Archbishop Ussher’s work on the age of the Earth. You’re assuming these guys are all prophets, you’re using zero skepticism on their claims, and you take their admitted guesses at potential timelines as gospel. After Ussher’s work, 200 years later, some publishers noted his guesses at years through events in Genesis. This is probably one of the origins of creationism, people assuming non-authoritative guesses to be utterances of the prophets.”
Whether or not I agree with the Rabbis in the Talmud is not the question. Obviously there is a reason I am a Christian and not Jewish. Having said that, you made the claim no contemporary of Jesus was a creationist. I said that wasn’t true and you asked me to provide proof. Josephus believed in a literal six day creation (if you need the direct quote, let me know) that was only roughly five thousand years before his own life. The rabbis before and after Jesus’ day believed in a literal six day creation that was recent. Agreeing or disagreeing with what they believed is not the issue. The challenge was whether or not they believed it. I have demonstrated that they did.
So, when Jesus talked about things being from the beginning of creation and talked about Noah and the ark, every person listening to him would have understood him to mean a real time and event that had happened only a thousand years prior. He never indicated otherwise and He never indicated them to be fantastical mythology.
Ed said, “You now accept Lilith as Adam’s first wife?”
I think you’d be better off asking if I believe in owls. The only passage that uses the word “lilith” in Scripture is from Isaiah 34:14. The translation and the context indicate that Isaiah is talking about a screeching night bird, aka, an owl and bears no resemblance of any reference of Lilith being Adam’s first wife.
Lilith, as believed to be Adam’s first wife, was an invention of the medieval times – from “Alphabet of Ben Sirah” specifically. Before that time, Lilith was believed to have been a name for an Assyrian demon who seduced unwary men and savagely murdered the children she bore for them. Interestingly, to guard against demons killing their babies (they did not understand reasons for high baby mortality rates back then), Jews would hang four amulets, one on the wall of each room of a newborn babe, with the inscription “Lilith – abi!” [“Lilith – begone!”] which some think is the origin, much later, of the English word “lullaby.” Anyway…Lilith is an interesting character to be sure in mythology and feel free to study it out on your own, but she has absolutely nothing to do with what is taught in Scripture.
Jews did not believe the Talmud to be Scripture either, and neither do I. They would reference it in a similar way as a Christian would reference a church creed, but that is not on par with anyone’s gospel.
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To quote: Evolutionists didn’t exist either. The norm was simply accepting as Scripture taught that God made the heavens and the earth. Jesus affirmed this truth and even placed Adam and Eve towards the beginning of creation…not billions of years later.
Gee…could that be because the bible was edited to say that to reflect a certain point of view like has always been done to it?
And that the Bible was written by a group of people who had nowhere near the knowledge of the earth as we do now?
If you showed a laser to a person from Jesus’ time they could only describe it as magic or a miracle. Does that make it magic or a miracle?
The bible condones slavery and Jesus never said otherwise. Does that make slavery right?
Because of your inane belief that the bible is the literal and inerrant Word of God, Joe, you’re having to engage in nothing but mental gymnastics and logical fallacy after logical fallacy. You’re turning both reality and your mind into a pretzel, figuratively speaking and trying to twist God to fit your interpretation of a human written book rather then acknowledging the reality and the real world that God created.
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And again, Joe, if something the Bible says contradicts reality then the Bible is wrong on that point. To say otherwise is to call God a liar.
The world is not less than ten thousand years old, there was no world wide flood and humanity is older than you creationists think. Those are the facts and you can wave your fingers and conjure whatever magic trick you want by pointing at the Bible and saying the magic words..but the facts are still the facts
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Joe, making a claim based off the Talmud or the bible then using the Talmud or bible as proof is circular logic and therefor a logical fallacy
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Lilith? So you don’t accept the primal androgyne theory?
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Argument from crumby authority.
1. It’s a website to support Israel, not a website dedicated serious study of Torah or Talmud, or history.
2. Note it also details the rise of the Prophet Mohammed PBUH, with the same authority noting Mohammed’s claims.
3. You’re quickly crashing into the mistakes of those who “studied” Archbishop Ussher’s work on the age of the Earth. You’re assuming these guys are all prophets, you’re using zero skepticism on their claims, and you take their admitted guesses at potential timelines as gospel. After Ussher’s work, 200 years later, some publishers noted his guesses at years through events in Genesis. This is probably one of the origins of creationism, people assuming non-authoritative guesses to be utterances of the prophets.
4. You now accept Lilith as Adam’s first wife? In much of the literature you’ve referred to over the past couple of days, the rabbis accept as “gospel” that Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are different stories, and that different women exist in them — the classic old question, since Man and Woman were created at the same time in Genesis 1, how does it come that Adam is alone at the beginning of Genesis 2? Obviously, something happened to Adam’s first wife. The Talmudic answer, which I presume you now accept, is that Lilith, the first woman, was cast out of Eden, and Eve had to be created after God realized Adam wanted companionship and not just raw sex with other animals.
If you don’t accept the Lilith story as part of your gospel, can you tell us how you pick and choose which parts of Jewish scripture to reject, and which to accept?
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Check the dates given from Jewish Talmud. They are very precise on their opinions of dates!
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/timeline.html
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This is from the subject heading:
BOOK 1
CONTAINING THE INTERVAL OF THREE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE YEARS
FROM THE CREATION TO THE DEATH OF ISAAC
Josephus, F., & Whiston, W. (1987). The works of Josephus: complete and unabridged. Peabody: Hendrickson.
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Color me very skeptical of that. Josephus made scant mention of the sect that became Christianity.
Got a citation? I’d like to see what Josephus actually wrote. With the creationists already demonstrated to be willing to twist Jesus’s words way beyond what Jesus meant, I have little doubt they’d put words in Josephus’s pen, too.
Update
Joe said:
I think you’re confusing today’s creationists with these rabbis. Talmud’s online — surely you’ll be able to back up this rather extraordinary claim — if it’s not false.
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“But creationists didn’t exist in Jesus’s time, and it’s false doctrine to claim Jesus vouched for a Young Earth, when He didn’t.”
Evolutionists didn’t exist either. The norm was simply accepting as Scripture taught that God made the heavens and the earth. Jesus affirmed this truth and even placed Adam and Eve towards the beginning of creation…not billions of years later.
Josephus taught that Jews believed that God created the earth about 5,000 years before Jesus. Beyond this, virtually all the rabbis from the Talmud believed in a literal 6 day creation, and even attempted to figure out which HOUR Adam was created. The rabbis taught that the total span of earth’s existence would be 7,000 years – patterned after God’s creation week.
So…sorry Ed. You’re just historically wrong and sounds like you’ve been listening to too much from Hugh Ross. Most all that existed back then were YEC’s. Some in the early church believed in a day-age creation theory, but that’s about it. Jesus had every chance to refute them but He affirmed even the creation account and marriage when He said, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’” (Mark 10:6)
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James said, “And yet, Joe, the bible was written and edited by people, Joe, so there is nothing stopping anyone, past present or future, from having Jesus say that.
So again…if the bible had Jesus say that would you believe it?”
So on the one hand I’ve got Ed telling me that it was just a parable, or it was an illusion to literature, similar to Harry Potter or Tolkien, and on the other I have James saying, “No, he didn’t really say that!”
Here’s what I think. I think you will do anything or say anything but actually take Jesus at His word. I never said Jesus said anything beyond what He said. And I’m sure not going to make up stuff and pretend what I would do or not do if He said it. If you simply allow Jesus to speak for Himself then won’t you be better off for it for learning from Him? Instead of imposing what you think onto Jesus…just let Him speak. Isn’t that what a disciple is supposed to do with His Teacher?
Unless you think you are the Master…
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Please notice, Joe, Jesus did not refute anyone’s claim that the Earth is much older than Darby would later say. The concept of a Young Earth was foreign to Jews in Jesus’s time, and contrary to the Psalms.
Indeed, Jesus often addressed false teachings.
As no doubt He would have addressed the false teachings of creationism, had they been part of the religious milieu of His day.
But creationists didn’t exist in Jesus’s time, and it’s false doctrine to claim Jesus vouched for a Young Earth, when He didn’t.
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Ed said, “Any literary allusion is testimony to the veracity of the story told in that literature?
I don’t think so.”
True. Except that Jesus was in the habit of refuting false teachings and stories. Many times when you read, “You have heard it said, but I say to you” Jesus is directly addressing the religious teaching of the day that He said was completely false.
Jesus is doing more than quoting a Tolkein book (which would have been really cool!). He is quoting Jewish Scripture to Jews. If they were false, given His record, He had every opportunity and precedent to do rebuke them as false. The fact that He affirms them rather than rejects them is the story. The fact that He references them as normal history rather than corrects the story IS the story.
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And yet, Joe, the bible was written and edited by people, Joe, so there is nothing stopping anyone, past present or future, from having Jesus say that.
So again…if the bible had Jesus say that would you believe it?
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Ed said, “But notice especially that Joe’s answer leaves out all the theological import of Jesus’s teaching.”
See my comment to James that demonstrates that I agree with your assessment of the passage and the theological point Jesus was making. I think we wrote that at the same time. I just posted mine after you did. :-)
Yet we were not having a discussion on the return of Christ, we were having a discussion on Noah’s Ark. I made the point that Jesus uses Noah as a reference – similar to how He used many other Old Testament examples. He never once cast any doubt on any of these stories or any other aspect of the Old Testament. He rather affirmed them, and affirmed the trustworthiness of the Old Testament. Jesus actually quoted from 24 different books in the OT! Never questioned them. Never said they were anything but true.
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Any literary allusion is testimony to the veracity of the story told in that literature?
I don’t think so.
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Ed said, “1. Jesus was not answering any of these questions:
A. How old is the Earth?
B. How was the Earth created?
C. How is your personal relationship with Charles Darwin, and can you explain Darwin’s theories of evolution?
D. Is flood geology valid? Why is there almost no evidence to support the idea of a worldwide flood, and so much evidence falsifying flood geology?
Nor was Jesus preaching about what the faithful “must believe” in order to get into heaven.”
That’s true. I’m not making the case that He was making these points. I’m merely pointing out that He spoke of it as credible and normal history. Similar to if I referenced a founding father to make a point about something now.
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Last thing:
James said, “And yet God promised that no such event would ever happen again. Are you saying that Jesus was saying God would go back on His word?”
1) How could God go back on a word that you don’t think He actually gave in Genesis? If no flood happened, no promise happened either.
2) You missed Jesus’ point. He was saying that just like things were before the flood happened was going to be similar to how it would be when He returned. The point He is making in the passage is that people carried on as they always had thinking everything was fine, even though Noah was preaching that a great flood was coming. Similarly, people will be carrying on thinking everything is fine and then – BOOM – Jesus is going to return as judge over the earth. That’s His prediction in the passage and He uses Noah and the ark as His reference point.
He was not saying that God would flood the earth again.
Jesus used Old Testament stories often to illustrate what He was going to do. He also used Jonah being in the belly of the fish and then regurgitated to show how He would die and three days later be risen back to life. He used the manna that the Israelites ate in the wilderness to demonstrate that He was the Bread of Life. He used the story of Moses making a bronze serpent and set it on a pole in the wilderness to save people who had been bitten by snakes to trust in God to illustrate that He would also have to be lifted up to save others. In all His illustrations He used from the Old Testament He never once cast doubt on their credibility or historicity. He usually used them to make a point about Himself – something He did with Noah and the ark.
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This is what I mean by torturing scripture.
Joe said:
It’s important to understand what Jesus was saying, to see all of what he said, and the question that prompted it.
Please note:
1. Jesus was not answering any of these questions:
A. How old is the Earth?
B. How was the Earth created?
C. How is your personal relationship with Charles Darwin, and can you explain Darwin’s theories of evolution?
D. Is flood geology valid? Why is there almost no evidence to support the idea of a worldwide flood, and so much evidence falsifying flood geology?
Nor was Jesus preaching about what the faithful “must believe” in order to get into heaven.
2. Jesus was instead answering a theological question — but a question unrelated to the Earth’s formation, origins of life on Earth, origins of planets, age of the planet, nor the veracity of flood geology.
Jesus was answering a question of Pharisees, about what signs people would see so they could know about the coming of the Kingdom of God.
In short, Jesus said there are no signs; humans will not be warned at the end of time, when the Kingdom of God comes.
In this chapter of Luke, Jesus entered a village and cleansed and healed ten lepers. Then he was asked when the Kingdom of God would come.
Jesus did NOT say “the flood of Noah was real, and flood geology is real despite God’s being a deceiver.”
That wasn’t the question.
The question was, how can we know when the end is near?
Jesus answered, no one knows. When the end comes, people will be caught unaware.
It escapes me how in the world that can be twisted into a claim that God’s handiwork lies. God’s creation doesn’t lie, Noah’s flood did not occur worldwide.
But notice especially that Joe’s answer leaves out all the theological import of Jesus’s teaching.
Is there a test on this material? Judging by Joe’s use of the material, no, there is no test. Don’t worry about Jesus’s message, Joe say — notice He passingly mentioned the story of Noah. Surely that must nullify all of science, no?
No, Joe. No, it doesn’t.
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James said, “So if the Bible has Jesus saying “Kill all blacks” you’d believe that Jesus really said that, joe?”
That’s a foolish question. He didn’t say that and the Bible doesn’t record him saying that.
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The parables of Jesus are well documented. This text is not among them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parables_of_Jesus
Cedar forests are noted in Mesopotamian mythology. Where forests were before the flood and where grew after may not be the same. Climates do change, after all. Lebanon used to be noted for their Cedar trees and still are to some degree. There are many other types of trees that could have been used, but Cedar would certainly have done the job well.
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So if the Bible has Jesus saying “Kill all blacks” you’d believe that Jesus really said that, joe?
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to spare confusion, Kirien is a name I use sometimes. Why it switched to using Kirien from James Kessler I have no idea. I didn’t tell it to do so.
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To quote: Jesus said, “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.They were eating and drinking marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.” – Luke 17:26-27
And yet God promised that no such event would ever happen again. Are you saying that Jesus was saying God would go back on His word?
And what makes you think Jesus wasn’t just using it as parable..as a means to teach a moral lesson? He did have a fondness for doing such things.
Btw..I would point out that what Jesus says there doesn’t say there was a world wide flood.
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To quote: I was merely pointing out to someone who says they are a Christ follower that the reputation of their Teacher is on the line. If Jesus gets this one wrong, how do we know He didn’t get other things wrong?
Since the Bible was written well after any such events and any such utterances by Jesus…your claim is specious at best.
Neither God nor Jesus are the authors of the Bible, to say otherwise is to elevate the Bible to the status of godhood…which is idolatry.
Even Jesus said don’t believe everything you hear or read and lets do bother to remember that Jesus quite often taught by parable..allegory.
Jesus never said anything about homosexuality and yet there sit those on your political side..attacking gays based on their claimed Christianity.
To say that the story of Noah’s ark is literally true is to call God a liar. Because there is no way to build an boat that big out of wood, there is no way to fit that many animals on said ark, there is no way the animals would have been all docile and peaceful..especailly the predators with their prey trapped with them, there is no way the ark could have held enough food or water, there is no way that salt water creatures, with few exceptions, would have survived fresh water or vice versa, there is no way to build a boat that big that fast and there is no way the middle east..especially that section of it..would have had enough trees for the wood and there is no way to repopulate entire species from just two surviving members of the species. And there is no evidence of a world wide flood. Starting with the fact that there simply isn’t enough water on the planet to meet the claim of a world wide flood.
No matter what happened, Joe, it has to be within the realm of reality and possible..and this story doesn’t meet those criteria.
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Jesus said, “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.They were eating and drinking marrying and being given in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.” – Luke 17:26-27
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We have no record that Jesus ever said the story of Noah was more than a parable, no record He ever taught about the flood.
How can Jesus be wrong about something he didn’t say at all?
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Black Flag said,“Jesus taught the flood story as normal history”
The old “if I was told a story, it must true, so if I repeat the story it must be true” fallacy.”
I was merely pointing out to someone who says they are a Christ follower that the reputation of their Teacher is on the line. If Jesus gets this one wrong, how do we know He didn’t get other things wrong? I don’t know about you, but I am not going to believe the claims of someone who said they died a perfect sinless death on my behalf if it could be demonstrated that they were a liar.
On the flip-side. If Jesus can be trusted in every respect in every other way, it is reasonable to say that He didn’t get this one wrong either. He was telling the truth about Noah just as sure as He was telling the truth about loving your enemies, or being the Savior of the world.
I wouldn’t expect the argument to carry much weight outside of the realm of Christianity however. For those who say that Jesus was a good teacher it should, because blatant liars aren’t good teachers.
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I wish there were editing on here. My post should have said, “Even the earliest New Testament manuscripts date within a few decades of their writing.” Beyond even anything else, logically, the closer the copy to the original. The more likely it is to be accurate to the orgiinal.
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“First, such an assumption is wholly unsupported. In modern day, with the vast amount of recording capability; video, sound, etc. we STILL cannot get a story straight – your contention is that by word of mouth and writing it down is superior.”
It’s actually quite well documented. Recent discoveries in archaeology have placed Jewish writing of one document to 1,000 BC and the latest one to roughly 1,500 BC. If you look up the history of the scribes who were charged with passing on any sacred writings, they went through much training in order to do their work. Their examination of copies included even numbering each word so that they could go back and count to make sure they had the right amount of words. Scribes were required to not look at the words or write from memory but copy letter by letter the entire document. The accuracy of their work is seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls where these ancient documents are practically identical to modern copies. They date as early as 408 BC and as late as AD 318. This means that some of the copies are contemporary with the writings of the last books of the Old Testament (such as Malachi)!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls
Their job was not interpretation or getting “the story straight.” Their job was copying. They did their job. Shoot, even in the New Testament, the greatest differences lie in different families of manuscripts (3 different translating location families) and they are still over 90% accurate. That’s among 5,000 plus manuscripts! Within families there is a 98% agreement. Beyond this, a vast majority of the disagreements are easily fixed by textual criticism where it is obvious where any scribal error was found. Beyond that, the earliest texts date Compare that with the story of Homer or the works of Caesar, will you? The earliest text of Plato we have is 1300 years removed from his life and we only have just over 200 manuscripts of those.
Anyone who says that the texts are not accurate to their original are not well versed in their Biblical history.
Now…does that make the writing accurate? Not necessarily. They could have lied or just made something up. Yet what we find in archaeology is consistent with the writings of Scripture. Many of the locations and the people described in Scripture are externally verified. Check that compared to other sacred writings – like the Book of Mormon.
Anyway, I’m not going to go further in making the case here. If you are interested, you will study it out for yourself. I will simply say that the case for Biblical accuracy is strong and the contention that the writers of Scripture played telephone is misguided at best.
“Flag said, “Math does not lie. The Ark myth is exactly that.”
And I just showed you the math. I was looking at the claim of the Nimitz and the San Diego zoo and didn’t see any math besides, “Man, these are really big!” Did I miss something there? I already demonstrated how much space the ark would have had to easily carry each species needed to repopulate the globe. I’ll assume you missed it instead of ignored it.
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Joe you could take all the machinery out of a Nimitz class carrier and it still would not be enough space to hold two of every species even minus the food and water.
And it is physically impossible to build a wooden boat that large much less bigger.
And where the hell was Noah getting that much wood from? The middle east isn’t known for its forests
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“2) Jews did not play telephone – they wrote history down and took the passing on of their records very seriously.”
First, such an assumption is wholly unsupported. In modern day, with the vast amount of recording capability; video, sound, etc. we STILL cannot get a story straight – your contention is that by word of mouth and writing it down is superior.
No, its not. There is no evidence whatsoever that historical records are accurate. Accounts vastly differ, and to think propaganda did not exist in the ancient world is misguided.
“3) History of ancestry was (and continues to be) very important to the Jewish nation.”
Specious. Again, genealogy has been recorded in the Western world for a millennium, yet records are lost destroyed and modified all the time. There is no way an ancient culture lacking in modern methodologies does BETTER.
“4) The differences between the Gilgamesh account and the Jewish account are profound.”
About as profound as West Side Story is different from Romeo and Juliet.
“Again, even comparing the ark to the Nimitz…it’s apples and oranges. The Nimitz has to have a huge amount of space taken up in engine equipment, missiles, and all of the other equipment needed for an aircraft carrier to run. ”
No, sir. The comparison was calculated on the total volume. It was not volume minus stuff.
Math does not lie. The Ark myth is exactly that.
“Jesus taught the flood story as normal history”
The old “if I was told a story, it must true, so if I repeat the story it must be true” fallacy.
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There is of course, no way for me to respond to everyone about everything that was posted here. Especially since I have work today and many other responsibilities. I’ll spend a bit of time here this morning though.
One of the things I I take issue with is your statement that the Genesis account came from Babylon. There are several reasons to believe this is not the case.
1) Hebrew writing has been found to predate the Babylonian Captivity at least until the time of Solomon indicating that it was a completely developed language much earlier than liberal scholars have given the Israelites credit for.
2) Jews did not play telephone – they wrote history down and took the passing on of their records very seriously. The scribes were known to even take a bath every time they translated to the word “Yahweh” out of reverence for God. This indicates that the records of their heritage were passed down from generation to generation in writing very, very carefully, as indicated by the Dead Sea Scrolls.
3) History of ancestry was (and continues to be) very important to the Jewish nation. The genealogies indicate that their blood line had been passed down carefully and not invented off of the top of their heads from the Babylonians.
4) The differences between the Gilgamesh account and the Jewish account are profound. Being relative neighbors however, and because of their close location to the place of the ark’s resting, it is quite plausible that their stories among the oldest and closest to the actual event which is where you find the similarities. Some problems with the Babylonian account of the flood are obvious. One is that the craft was said to be cubed. Such a design would have disastrous! The dimensions given from the book of Genesis could have fulfilled it’s only purpose – to float.
Again, even comparing the ark to the Nimitz…it’s apples and oranges. The Nimitz has to have a huge amount of space taken up in engine equipment, missiles, and all of the other equipment needed for an aircraft carrier to run. The ark would have served one purpose. To float. The only thing they would have needed would have been cages, food, and water.
Let’s compare it to a railroad car. One double deck stock car is said to be able to hold up to 240 adult sheep. The ark was big enough to be the equivalent to roughly 430 stock cars! Beyond this, who said that adult animals came on the ark? If space is an issue, then perhaps smaller animals who would have eaten less and slept more would have been the way to go?? So…even with 50,000 animals on board, the ark wouldn’t have been even 40% full. Plenty of room for food, water, and 8 human passengers. No one knows the exact number of animals that Noah would have taken, but even given for animals going extinct after the flood, the ark was plenty big enough to hold all the needed animals.
Regarding adaptation – I wasn’t making the case for all feline to have had only one representative ancestors on the ark. You are taking my case far, far beyond what I intended it to be. I was saying that it wasn’t necessary for all types of cats to be on board. Only two. As noted by “flag”, man has bred many species that produce great variety in them. Yet there are only 5,400 species of mammals on the earth. 9,000 species of birds. 8,000 species of reptiles (not all of which would have needed to go on the ark). Any invertebrates that actually needed to go on the ark wouldn’t have taken up that much room. So, adaptation to some degree has happened in the past several ages as species adapt to their various environments – classifying animals that are very closely related as different species. Yet all of the species from before the flood did not need to go on the ark – only their representatives. That may be why we find so much variety in the fossil record – many of these went animals went extinct because only two of their kind went on the ark – not every variety from before the flood. That was all I was trying to say regarding adaptation.
Jesus taught the flood story as normal history, as did the writer of Hebrews, and 1&2 Peter. In the Old Testament, the writers of Isaiah and Ezekiel also spoke of it as history. In fact, In Isaiah, Isaiah was quoting God when he said, ““This is like the days of Noah to me: as I swore that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you,and will not rebuke you.” (Isaiah 54:9). Jesus said, “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark,” (Matthew 24:38). So, if Jesus, and many of the other writers of Scripture get this one screwed up, not much to say about their reliability, is there? If God can’t get His History right, what’s to say He’s got this salvation thing right? If He can’t be trusted…why trust Him with my life?
By the way, India has 3 different flood legends. Global flooding myths, not local.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths#India
I wasn’t aware of the Navajo legend. Add that one to the list.
Ed said, “Tell us about the Chinese flood story, can you?”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_(China)
At the end though, this is a worldview discussion, not a discussion of the particulars. You think it ridiculous that I believe the flood story to have literally happened. No “reasonable man” would accept it as so. Yet you tell me that I am to take by faith that life arose out of a primordial soup from non-life. That everything we see around us happened by chance of natural selection. That God did nothing of any observance, but we should still worship Him as Creator. That any faith I may have should be pure Fideism. That over the course of 13.7 billion years, our little planet formed and developed so that 3.5 billion years ago our planet was able to pop a life form out of thin air. That life form somehow reproduced for no apparent reason, and developed enough new traits over and over and over an amazing amount of times that it produced all life that we see today. That we have no reason for existence because we’re here for a blip of time and then cease to exist. I could go on, but you’re struggling with how many animals could fit on an ark – a feat the is entirely plausible. Yet at the same time you expect me to believe a billion more miracles happened naturalistically. Well, at least you got the faith in faith part down pat…
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Bf, what was my sentence before the sentence containing the word ‘inbreeding’?
The first sentence provides the context for the second sentence
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Joe, just because there are flood stories in many different areas isn’t actually proof that they’re all talking about the same one flood. Of course there is going to be flood stories in ancient human history…ancient humans settled next to sources of water.
There is no evidence for a world wide flood because there is no evidence that all those human cultures got wiped out by a flood all at the same time. At the supposed time of noah’s flood the Egyptian, Chinese and Mesoamerican, to name just three, cultures were continuing merrily along with no indication of a flood type catastrophe.
That and water does not *poor* appear and *poof* disappear.
Btw, any species reduced to just two members would not survive. There’s a reason inbreeding is taboo.
And tigers and my Siamese cat are not the same species. And by far and away most creationists do claim that a new species evolving from and old species never happened proves your claim there wrong.
So quit being disingenuous, we are not putting words in the mouths of creationists. You creationists spout those claims all on your own
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Be careful with your inbreeding “theory”. It is not correct.
Case: dogs.
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Joe, just because there are flood stories in many different areas isn’t actually proof that they’re all talking about the same one flood. Of course there is going to be flood stories in ancient human history…ancient humans settled next to sources of water.
There is no evidence for a world wide flood because there is no evidence that all those human cultures got wiped out by a flood all at the same time. At the supposed time of noah’s flood the Egyptian, Chinese and Mesoamerican, to name just three, cultures were continuing merrily along with no indication of a flood type catastrophe.
That and water does not *poor* appear and *poof* disappear.
Btw, any species reduced to just two members would not survive. There’s a reason inbreeding is taboo.
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I still don’t get it, but I’ll take your word for it:
Click to access BalcoShuster%282009b%29_Al_Be_Ne_burial_dating.pdf
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Oxygen is also used, but since it is also dependent on temperature, it has to be equated to other methodologies to be confirmed.
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I’m going to have to read up to understand. You say “oxygen isotope,” but then you mention beryllium and chlorine.
Very interesting.
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Oxygen isotope is one of the primary methodology – 10Be and 36Cl.
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Annual layers provide one method, and certainly a method good for determining relative age.
Is it possible to date ice using radio-isotopes? Other than ash from a volcanic eruption, how does that method work?
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Joe said:
What you’ve proposed here isn’t just adaptation, Joe. Tigers and domestic cats parted ways millions of years ago. You’re proposing molecules-to-man processes at lightning speed.
While you say you have difficulty with evolution, “molecules to man,” you propose exactly that, only faster.
If your rebuttal hypothesis to evolution requires evolution, but faster, it’s not a rebuttal at all, but a concession.
There is no evidence for such speeded up evolution, Joe.
No, it’s not “adaptation” to get from a “cat kind” to tiger, or lion, or lynx. That’s evolution.
Did the Plymouth colony have maize? Interesting choice. If they ate maize, it was much the same as what we have today.
The maize ancestor, however, teosinte, made a quantum leap from a rather large-seeded grass to modern maize at almost lightning speed, over a few hundred years (probably a sport mutation which was then cultured — but 5,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Here’s a serious story about the origins of modern corn by Sean B. Carroll, written for laymen in the New York Times. 9,000 years, no flood of Noah. Check it out.
Joe said:
We had creationists testify to that point exactly before the Texas State Board of Education in the past nine months. Ken Ham has argued that hundreds of times in front of audiences that (by his count) number in the tens of millions.
Excuse us for listening to you.
Perhaps more important, however, is that animals NOT CHANGING was one of the key points of of the guy who really originated creationism, William Paley, way back in 1799. His text talking about how there might be minor variations around an archetype was THE scientific explanation Darwin learned in the classroom. Maybe more important, that was the hypothesis Darwin set out to prove, by gathering evidence from all over the world on the fixity of species.
Excuse us for knowing your history better than you appear to.
[When did you guys abandon Paley?]
Which is, again, why I am so astonished that your “alternative proposal” to evolution is “vastly speeded up evolution.” You leap from one unevidenced hypothesis to another, without pausing even to ponder the evidence available.
Reminds me of the great RATE project AIG and other creationists have been engaged in for nearly 50 years now — a project to explain rock dating consistent with a claim that Noah’s flood occurred no more than 10,000 years ago. I gave up tracking the comedy more than a decade ago when AIG and the ICR claimed dramatic breakthroughs in the science — they were able to date rocks comparatively, consistently; the only problem was they couldn’t tell which rocks were pre-flood, and which came after.
Well, you guys fight it out, let us know if you ever find answers — but show your work. It’s not the preconceived answers that provide benefit — they are usuall wrong. It’s the work that counts.
Gilgamesh/Noah probably built a raft, and took his domestic stock with him — a couple of cow-like critters, some sheep, goats, perhaps a pig. (Chickens would come much later.)
The flooding of the Black Sea when the ice dam at the Bosporus broke, about 10,000 years ago, probably gave rise to the story.
It’s a Biblical fish story, but about those who avoided sleeping with the fishes. (Actually, the Black Sea is largely dead due to oxygen starvation, but I digress.) Over time and retelling, the size of the ship grew. The number of animals grew. And the size of the flood grew, too.
Here’s probably the best account from academia: Noah’s Flood by William Ryan and Walter Pitman. (Heck, that book is 14 years old!)
You should also get acquainted with the work of Robert Ballard, the noted deep-sea explorer, and his work on the Black Sea.
There is science there, but you’re trampling it.
Joe said:
There are facts that might lead to a story; but the historical fact is covered by 5,000 to 10,000 years of embellishment, oral tradition with notorious error-multiplying characteristics, and painted over with religious fervor that doesn’t lend itself to fact preservation.
Joe, tell us: Have you ever wondered why it is that the story of Noah’s flood wasn’t part of Jewish tradition until AFTER the Babylonian captivity, during which 86 years of exposure to the Babylonian flood story might have given some cross-pollination? (Not to mention Genesis 1, which is a priestly spin on the Babylonian creation story — but I digress again.)
No. There is no representation in the Pentateuch that it is all straight history, nor that the story of Noah is, necessarily, historic. Christians went out on a limb, and took science with them when they argued in the 18th century that the flood story was real. Working from that assumption crippled geology fiercely for a couple of centuries. But by 1830, serious Christians understood that the evidence to confirm the flood story not only did not exist, but the flood story was contradicted by the evidence that DID exist. Lyell was wrote as a Christian pastor when he wrote his three-volume set on all the world’s geology, noting that the flood story was falsified, and flood geology had led to many dead ends and so had to be abandoned as science, on the Christian ground that truth is more valuable than fiction and the truth God reveals in creation is always more accurate than scripture since it’s from God’s hand directly, as well as on the scientific grounds that one goes with the evidence.
Unlike Abraham, we have no tomb for Noah. Christian tradition doesn’t follow the tribes of Noah.
There is no reason to think that the writer of the Noah story understood it as history. The book doesn’t say so. We know Genesis was thrown together from a wide variety of fragmentary stories and documents, and not bound into a canon until the Babylonian captivity (uh, oh — there’s that Gilgamesh story and origins again).
Most scholars put the Noah story along with the other Yahwist traditions — stories written down for their ability to instruct in how to live, occasionally telling why, but not for their historicity.
It takes a particular torturing of scripture to change it from scripture to history, or to science. Somehow, it just seems wrong, to me, to torture scripture that way.
In particular, there is nothing in Christian tradition, particularly after Christ, that suggests there is any theological need to defend the stories beyond their teaching values. No Christian faith traditionally requires belief in these stories for salvation — indeed, no tradition requires knowledge of these stories.
I can’t figure out why creationists feel the need to twist scripture to try to twist science. Seems to me sticking to the facts and seeking truth would be a better endeavor.
Tell us about the Chinese flood story, can you?
There are a lot of flood stories, yes — a few even come close to the Noah version. There are some notable absences, too. Most Chinese tradition makes no note of any floods. Aztec stories don’t talk about a Noachic flood, but instead local floods — which make sense when we remember their city, larger than London in 1492, was built in the middle of a lake, then around it.
Were five dozen of the stories similar to the Noah story, that would be something to stand up and take a harder look at. But that’s not the case. Mark Isaak collected as many as he could find, and he talks about them over at Talk-Origins. The diversity in the stories is quite striking, not the sameness — and few come close to matching the Noah tale.
Side note: I don’t think Isaak is necessarily faithful to all the tales. My Navajo friends tell a remarkably different story of the floods — all of which were escaped by crawling through a hole in the sky. (Hey, think of what would happen to someone living in the bottom of a canyon in that area; when the spring floods come, one escapes by climbing to the sky . . .). The floods are all directed from the gods, directly at the People (Dineh), but are not necessarily world wide in a physical sense, but are instead world changing in a metaphysical sense. The stories I’ve heard in Navajoland are all striking in the inability to track them scientifically. In the Arizona desert, a worldwide flood would be apparent, but it’s not. One Navajo elder explained to me that looking for physical evidence of the insect people, or Water Woman or Water Baby or Coyote or Raven, would be a disservice to the spirits; what about scientific study of the rocks? Well, that doesn’t matter to the spirits; how this world was formed is immaterial to the fact that the Dineh live in it now.
Not a bad philosophy: Faith doesn’t depend on the age of rocks, nor the content of DNA; faith depends on whether one has faith.
Christians figured that out in the 19th century. Creationists should have done the same thing years ago.
Tell me about the Hindu flood story, can you? You’d think that a major religion like Hinduism, followed by nearly a billion people, would have a good flood story, especially since its origins are in an area so close to Noah’s reputed home. Yes?
And how about the Zoroastrians? Ice? That’s not a flood.
The Norse flood story is a lot closer to the creation story God told Job, with the death of the Frost Giant Ymir flooding out the other Frost Giants, and his body forming the Earth (in one of the versions of the Marduk creation story God says is the right one, at least to Job, God fights a giant dragon, slays her, and her body is cut up to form the land on which humans live).
Gee, the more I think about it, the more I read about it, the more I begin to see that the story of Noah’s flood isn’t universal. It’s quite rare, in fact — with most of the details overlapping only in the Gilgamesh story, which was part of the mythological structure of the Babylonians, under whose captivity the Israelites suddenly developed the Noah story.
So here we are. You tell me, without evidence, that we should grant no credence to the considerable science behind evolution despite its massive healing and feeding properties upon which our very lives depend, and that I shouldn’t give it credence because you think there was a boat smaller than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, made of wood, that carried every species out of the oceans for a year, despite the obvious impossibility of that . . .
What benefits would we gain from rejecting science for such a story? How could it possibly benefit the search for a cure for cancer, the drive to feed 9 billion people, or the understanding of how to preserve our little spaceship from exhaustion that would mean the end of humanity?
Given a choice between beneficial truths, or a fairy tale story about a flood, what human would choose the latter?
Whose side are you on, again?
Literature and its spread may have happened, but not a worldwide flood.
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The Bible pounder’s are full of circular reasoning.
They point to a book to declare “if this book said this, it is true, because the book said it”
Interestingly, they don’t do that with Harry Potter books, yet, their reasoning here would be just as applicable.
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Typical Bible pounders operate on this concept.
They watch a movie starring Tom Hanks who portrays a solider in WW2.
Their thinking is such: since WW2 was an historical event, the solider played by Tom Hanks must have been real. Ergo, Tom Hank’s character is an historical fact.
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Genetically modified corn….
As most unlearned mistaken, they believe the corn self-modified over the centuries “all by the hand of God”.
No.
MANKIND mixed and bred corn strains to improve their food supply ON PURPOSE….. not the fickle finger of God.
All dogs in the whole world are man-made. They all come from a single pair of wolves 10,000 years ago. God hand no finger here too.
To confuse the designs of man to be the fickle way of “God” is radically unintellectual.
Even theologically, it is bizarre. Do you believe God would contradict his own natural laws to produce “super natural” events or things?
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James,
Heck, you don’t need examples of cows or crows. Just use rats.
Rats on an abandoned ship will soon run out of food. They pick the next food source available … other rats.
The survivor rats become vicious meat eaters and should any other meat source become available, it won’t last long…..
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Flood narratives….
It seems utterly surprising to Bible pounders that mankind has historically set their civilizations around water.
Water has this tendency to flood and once in a while really, really flood. Hence, every culture has great flood stories.
This amazing thing bewilders Bible pounders into thinking it was one flood.
No doubt, 1,000 years from now, they will point to Katrina as being part of Noah’s story.
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Scientists do not determine the age of ice cores by their layers.
Scientists determine it by the isotopes of the gases trapped in the ice.
As these have a predictable decay into predictable elements we can tell how much there was originally and how much is left and calculate the age.
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And how exactly did kangaroos get to where the ark was, Joe? Or koalas? Or the south American jaguar?
If you have to say ‘then a miracle happened’ then you are being blatantly dishonest.
Then there is the fact that, for example, whales and dolphins will drown in fresh water and quite a lot of fresh water species cant survive sit water
And if you think cows and the like will be docile when there is little food and water then you quite clearly have no bloody experience farming.
My family does have that experience, Joe. Cows without enough water or food will go absolutely beserk.
That and carnivores like lions don’t eat salads
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Joe, do you know what happens when cows don’t have enough food and water? Besides the obvious starving and going thirsty.
Hell for that matter do you even have the faintest clue how much a cow will eat or drink in one day?
And what exactly was keeping all the predators from eating the herbivores?
Then there is the simple fact that it is structurally impossible to build a boat larger than the largest ships we have now out of wood
Not to mention there is not enough genetic breadth to repopulate an entire species from only two survivors.
Sorry Joe, its time that you admit Noah’s flood isn’t anything other than allegory
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Ed said, “In the end, Joe, I’m astonished that you don’t see through those claims. To say that Noah needed to carry only a few representatives of many genera, which could then evolve at a rate far beyond anything Darwin ever claimed, and well beyond a rate ever measured even by the Grants in the Galapagos, is to concede that evolution is necessary to make the Bible accurate.
Did you start out claiming evolution was impossible, and didn’t occur?
Twain was right. It’s easier just to tell the truth, so you don’t have to remember all the falsehoods and work to keep them straight.
Your answer to why evolution didn’t occur involves evolution occurred at a much faster rate?”
Ed, you and I have talked at lengths about how breeding changes the variations of a species. You see that in humanity even on the surface – eye color, skin color, hair color, baldness, etc. etc. I’ve said it a thousand times. No creationist has a problem with adaptation of a species. It’s observable fact. What creationists have a problem with is molecules to man and the needed additions to genetic data that would be needed to explain all the completely different species. Adaptation and variation of a species has never been the issue.
How long did it take corn to adapt from what the Pilgrims ate to what we eat today? Change can occur within a species quite quickly.
It’s not a question of keeping the story straight. It’s that you’ve been putting words in creationists mouth’s for so long that you don’t know what we agree with and what things we disagree. Seriously Ed, I find it surprising that you think that a creationist would believe that all animals would look exactly the same today as they did many millennium ago with no changes.
For the record however, I do disagree with Ham in that I think it perfectly plausible for there to be purposeful gaps in the genealogies and think it perfectly plausible that the earth is older than 6,000 years. Other places in Scripture there are people left out of genealogies, so I don’t personally think that all the changes within the species that we see today happened in the last 4,000 years. Many more unknown thousands of years may have transpired before and after the flood.
I don’t know how many animals Noah took on the ark. But I do believe it to be the Biblical account to be a real historical fact. All of the details have been left out because they’re not important to the story. I agree with you that there is theological message to the story. Yet it is stated as historical narrative – the same type of literature as if one were reading about the life of Jesus in the New Testament. There is no reason to suspect that the writer of Genesis thought the flood account to be anything but historically accurate. Holes in the particulars – of course. But that doesn’t mean they didn’t happen.
Gilgamesh is not the only other flood narrative. At least 300 flood legends from around the globe exist from the Peru, to China, to the Aztecs, to the Aborigines in Australia. How many other stories of a shared experience of mankind circle the globe? Even if you do not accept the Biblical account as the historical narrative, you have to admit that something happened. And it was epic enough for all the world to take the story with them and pass it down for through the ages.
So you tell me Ed…what happened that all peoples of the world would take notice in their history?
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Here is a follow up article on the ice.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/fit/ice-cores-thousands-years
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Liars often figure. None of those cleverer, more devious-than-you people (I don’t think they were smarter, just more dishonest) has adequately considered the real number of animals of size on the planet, let alone their space, food and waste needs.
In the end, Joe, I’m astonished that you don’t see through those claims. To say that Noah needed to carry only a few representatives of many genera, which could then evolve at a rate far beyond anything Darwin ever claimed, and well beyond a rate ever measured even by the Grants in the Galapagos, is to concede that evolution is necessary to make the Bible accurate.
Did you start out claiming evolution was impossible, and didn’t occur?
Twain was right. It’s easier just to tell the truth, so you don’t have to remember all the falsehoods and work to keep them straight.
Your answer to why evolution didn’t occur involves evolution occurred at a much faster rate?
Not only is the Bible not a book of science, attempts to turn it into science do not come from any book of logic.
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There are three species of elephant living today — can’t be bred one from the other. Lions, tigers, jaguars, cheetahs, American mountain lions, lynx, bobcats, ocelots and a half-dozen other sizable, non-domesticated species of pantera; three species of camels; cape buffalo, bison, aurochs, yaks; we’ll be charitable and say you can evolve two species from one in 4,000 years among woodpeckers, so the ark would have needed only 100 different species of woodpeckers (Duane Gish used to have an amusing 20 minute rant on how no woodpecker could ever do that, but I’ll allow you to effectively label one of the great gods of creationism wrong, if you argue it); land dwelling birds would be a thousand different species, and many, like the Andean condor and the California condor, are big.
Just these few examples start suggesting how much room would be needed. There are several hundred species held in the San Diego Zoo, but not close to the thousands that live out there that would have had to have been carried. The San Diego Zoo is not large enough; a Nimitz-class carrier is as long as the San Diego Zoo is wide, but not nearly so large overall, and that carrier is the largest in the U.S. Navy; those few larger ships, oil tankers mostly, can’t make a case for carrying a variety of species in living cargo.
We haven’t begun to discuss most ungulates, the impalas/anetlope/gazelles; we’ve not mentioned the equines, which in Noah’s day would have numbered at least seven different species (and which cannot be bred one from the other, or hybridized, for the most part, because the mules are sterile, you know).
Nowhere does scripture claim that the story of Noah is to be taken literally, with the possible exception of pre-Babylonian captivity Babylonian scripture, in the original version with Gilgamesh instead of Noah.
Anyone familiar with animal farming or ranching can explain the difficulties of keeping animals alive and healthy with acres of food available, for a few weeks. You’re saying it was done with no food available for most of a year, with no space for the food. A competent zoologist could give us a better appreciation for just how many animals would have had to have been carried.
Joe, do you know how big a Nimitz is? You can’t be serious in claiming a larger, seaworthy craft was engineered out of wood.
The Noah story is interesting. It’s not history, it’s not science. It carries a theological message, but nowhere does it claim that it could survive testing for historicity or scientific accuracy, and nowhere does scripture urge us to do so.
So I think your scriptural foundation for claiming Noah actually built a boat are non-existent. A simple hour of consideration for how any single vessel could contain all land-based life on earth, should dissuade rational people from claiming it’s anything more than a parable.
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Kirien asked: “How big would the boat have to have been to fit 2 of every species on it?”
Or was it 2 of some species and 7 of others?
And how exactly do you get enough genetic breadth to repopulate every species from such small numbers?
The Ark must have been at least 450 feet (137 m) long, 75 feet (23 m) wide, and 45 feet (14 m) high. Think of a barge, and you get a good picture.
The ark need not have carried two of each species that existed. It needed to carry two representatives of each species so that the earth could be repopulated. Using a modern example, Noah wouldn’t have been required to bring every kind of dog, but only two dogs. In addition, he was only bringing land dwelling animals and birds, which cuts it down considerably as well.
Much smarter people than I have already done the math. The estimate is that if there were three levels for the animals enclosures, less than half of the space would have been needed for the animals, leaving plenty of room for food, fresh water, and people.
Regarding genetic breadth, I am trying to see how this is a problem for a creation model. I’ve studied up on allele’s and it’s not a problem in a creation model.
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A firm foundation in logic is not “mental gymnastics.”
Joe, any attempt at dating that relies on “and then a miracle occurred here” is not scientific, not replicable, and not intellectually honest.
Greenland gets one year, each and every year. It gets a winter, a spring, a summer and a fall, in each of those years, dictated by the orbit of the Earth even if not always easily discernible in the layers in the ice, due to unusual weather.
That paper leaps on the anomalies and assumes they are normal; scientists have spent several decades looking at the anomalies, and have decided after hard research involving a wide variety of sources, that the anomalies are anomalies, and not normal.
When we’re talking 10,000 years, by the way, 1% would be 100 years; 100,000 years, 1% is 1,000 years. You call logic “mental gymnastics,” but in order to avoid that logical path, you must invoke several miracles not excluding a devious, deceitful God who wishes to confound scientists for nefarious and ignoble reasons.
Science has no evidence that God is evil and sneaky; science has no evidence that God’s son, Loki, has godly powers and holds sway on Greenland’s ice.
Surely a Christian-based study would not come to such a conclusion as you suggest.
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Did you actually read the entire article Ed? The data would be correct to the 1-2% range if each layer represented only one year. Yet the article makes the case against uniformitarianism by demonstrating the “mental gymnastics” used to get a uniform date. The article then postulates the solution to the problem may be…possibly…that because of climates change (which constantly happens as you well note elsewhere), Greenland’s weather patterns have not always been constant. So, measuring what happens in the past by measuring the present is not an accurate way to determine the age of the ice.
I’m no expert here on this subject by any stretch, but I think it strange that creationists are the one’s saying that climates change and evolutionists are saying “nope. No such thing exists.”
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I have a simple question for you, Joe.
How big would the boat have to have been to fit 2 of every species on it?
Or was it 2 of some species and 7 of others?
And how exactly do you get enough genetic breadth to repopulate every species from such small numbers?
Well…I guess it was three simple questions. Feel free to answer them in your own words, however.
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Loads of denialism there!
For example:
And if you click to the link, you find a description that the ice scientists say they’re accurate “only” to within 1%, so, the creationists argue, they’re really WRONG!
All those annual layers of ice? There’s no creationist description, except, perhaps to say they were deposited DURING Noah’s flood. But it would have been too warm for that (the issue isn’t discussed).
Yet another of a million miracles God had to have performed during the flood in order to deceive Humankind.
Joe, the more I read, the more convinced I become that you worship Loki, and not the God of Abraham.
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Not a waste of my time at all. As I recall, you stubbornly stuck to the non-evidence position, which I find contrary to reason and Christianity.
Got anything new?
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http://creation.com/ham-nye-debate
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Yes Ed, we did. Sorry to have wasted your time on something so irrelevant.
Here is some more information for your readers to consider from the perspective of creationists that was addressed by Mr. Nye.
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I’ll take “the Ark worked like a Tardis” if the next clause in the claim is, ” . . . and Dr. Who was there to make sure everything went okay.”
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I know! I know! The animals were in an embryonic state or God shrunk the animals to miniature size or Noah only had to take a few “kinds” because God would magically change them into all different species after the flood or the Ark worked like a Tardis.
Personally, I like the last one, but you know it’s a futile question to ask.
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Didn’t we already do that?
(Here, for example.)
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Would you debate me Ed?
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