Noah's Ark

[sideshowbob]

You are quite right, but the statement is "can take a hundred years" does not mean "only will take a hundred years", dear English scholar!

Isn't that what you're trying to argue? That the layers "could have" been deposited quickly, therefore the Flood is possible? If you agree that some of the layers needed thousands of years or tens of thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years to form, you can't argue that they were formed by the flood. You can only use layers that could have formed in one year, actually, as evidence of a year-long flood and those layers are simply not worldwide.

 

[Rhaedas]

What I find interesting, is that all the ten simple laws of heaven are not only moral but necessary for life, and more so, quality of life. When we study these, we find those principles obeyed in nature, from the atom to the whale. That's why animals are half decent even though we have ruined their world.

Ten laws of heaven...you mean the Ten Commandments? I would love to see how you connect those ten laws (pick whichever set, popular or the last quoted) to laws of physics. This will be interesting, to say the least.

What causes animals - that have developed from many common ancestors to become incompatable with DNA, even within a species, so that a crafted limb is rejected, and why the inability to interbreed?

"Species" is a manmade construct. We like to categorize and put things in boxes to help us understand them, but nature doesn't work that way. Nature is a big gray area, and doesn't see those divisions. So you will have overlaps. Some just won't flat out work, but some do, and so you get mules, ligers, and other crosses of the lines. But usually there's a break somewhere in their coding that reveals the incompatibility, such ad deficiencies, mutations, and/or sterility.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Have to tweak what you said there, Aqueous. Many times mutations are passed that have nothing to do with the survival rate. Many times bad mutations get passed out of sheer luck, as all the organism has to do is breed to be successful. Hence the idea of a "designer" makes one wonder what that designer was thinking, as there are numerous bad designs in nature, either in function or in dead ends. But for evolution, breeding the next population is all you need, so you get some very odd solutions for problems that a designer would have never bothered with.

So true, Rhaedas. I think your point stands on its own against the YECs in that a "design to a plan", while it may include code, doesn't include code that steps on itself, loses its place and wanders off in all directions from "the plan". This is our ROM-BIOS if I may be so trite. Why stick it in NVRAM with a stack pointer that overflows? All that's going to happen is chaos. This would be where "God does not play dice" would also apply. The master craftsman isn't a crap-shooter. If God were a programmer, he couldn't even get Microsoft-certified, much less pass freshmen Software Engineering classes.

That's hardly omniscient.

But you're dead on target about Nature being a crapshooter. Good call. Wonder if the fundies even have a clue what you mean.

 

[Aqueous Id]

"You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor...by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

That's what I'm talking about. All the Creationist liars are condemned under their own doctine. Thanks for pointing that out.

I presume you already know the commandment you're so keen about was taken from Hammurabi. The Ten Commandments, and many of the other umpty-ump Biblical decrees are written in a Babylonian stele. It's quite lengthy, so the Hebrews took certain portions and jumbled them up, and this became the underlying material in your Bible concerning laws.

Here's one I bet you recognize:

"An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."

And here's the introduction written above it:

When Anu the Sublime, King of the Anunaki, and Bel, the lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned to Marduk, the over-ruling son of Ea, God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man, and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the black-headed people like Shamash, and enlighten the land, to further the well-being of mankind.

and then Hammurabi lays down his nearly 300 commandments, including the ones above that you like to quote. You remember some of this from high school (or junior high) don't you?

As the accuser, you're the one lying

Are you accusing me of being an accuser? What kind of lie is that?

The difference between me and you is that I start with facts and work from there. However, if you lie to me, just to dismiss my facts, I'm usually going to nail you. After all, what's worse than a liar pretending to be holy? (Feel free to quote-mine the Bible on that subject.)

If you'd given me some fact I've brought to the table which you claim is false, I'd be able to respond. I've tried be accurate in all of my posts. I'd gladly retract any error I've made. Odds are that's not what you're talking about.

and pretending

I don't have to pretend--I graduated high school. Haven't you? That's the level of science were discussing here. Or hadn't you noticed?

...believing data gathered by rube goldberg contraptions 'created' by arrogant simpletons...

You mean like the Internet? How is it a rube goldberg contraption? That's lately been where I've been gathering data. You mean you don't? I think if you look back at some of what I've posted, you'll notice it comes from National Academy of Sciences, US Geological Survey, NOAA/NASA, the US Forestry Service, countless universities - (and I mean real ones, not mock-ups) and scientific journals. Of course you'll have to use this rube goldberg contraption built by simpletons to check. That is, unless you happen to have invented the internet yourself, in which case you should be able to wish the data into existence.

I also provided some first hand accounts and bios for top scientists, Sir Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, to name a few. Do you know anything about these people or their discoveries? They certainly were no simpletons. What word would you use to describe a person who is ignorant of their work. Could it be: simpleton?

Pot calling the kettle black?

this over against the God implanted witness within to His activity without.

"Let their lying lips be silenced, for with pride and contempt they speak arrogantly against the righteous."

In that case maybe you should take the admonition seriously. If you actually believe those words, then you would certainly have to believe that Kelvin was righteous. And easily another 100 of his level of grace and God-given wisdom. Anyone that would speak arrogantly against such righteous men (and women) with pride and contempt would then fall under the warning you posted.

Better get humble or take cover. God doesn't like wolves in sheep's clothing.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Now if you were only looking for an answer about nature, from natural causes only, that would explain why science has gone down that road.

Yes, science only concerns itself with nature.

But as efficient and consistent nature is, it cannot be correctly appreciated or understood unless their is an acknowledgement of ID, and a supernatural power that caused it and maintains it.

No, because we're not imposing our imagination on Nature when we study it. We're just collecting whatever Nature reveals, and nothing more. And that's the stuff science is made of.

The aim of evolution has always been to get rid of God.

Evolution has nothing to do with religion, so evolutionary biology has no aim other than to understand Nature. It's the other way around. It's the fundies attacking education. That's what has been in the news on and off for nearly 100 years.

And it has succeeded. But it is a little harder to get rid of basic human rights that are carved in stone in the law of God.

You mean the code of Hammurabi I mentioned in in my last post?? There's your law written in stone. It's 1000 years before the Hebrews catch on.

There are no tablets of Moses. And we know Ea actually came down to Hammurabi and gave him these laws because an eye witness took a picture of it.

What I find interesting, is that all the ten simple laws of heaven are not only moral but necessary for life, and more so, quality of life.

As long as you don't forget that that was the heaven of Ea and Anu and Bel and Marduk and Taimat and some 200 other gods. You sure wouldn't want all that heat coming down on you for stealing their laws and calling them the laws of Yahweh. I don't believe any of it, so they can't touch me. But as a believer, you ought to heed their words more carefully. I'd start with a search of the stele of Hammurabi and find out as much as you can, to get your mojo workin, so to speak.

When we study these, we find those principles obeyed in nature, from the atom to the whale.

For cryin out loud. They couldn't even take pi to 2 places--we needed the Greeks to give us that. And the Persians, Egyptians and Chinese had astronomy while the Hebrews were sacrificing goats to Asherah (the wife of Jehovah). There's absolutely nothing of value in the Bible concerning science.

That's why animals are half decent even though we have ruined their world.

No, it's because animals don't have the intelligence to exploit the environment for gain.

It takes intelligence and commitment to see all the connections, even as presented in evolution, and it often seems like I don't want to recognise that at all, because I see it differently.

I think it makes no sense to try to read any religious text literally. You only need to read scholarly studies on the actual original manuscripts that still exist - to begin to realize that it's silly to take it literally.

What causes animals - that have developed from many common ancestors to become incompatable with DNA, even within a species, so that a crafted limb is rejected, and why the inability to interbreed?

Good question, but you have a couple of mistaken assumptions going on there. First of all interspecies breeding is generally not possible simply because that's one way we define what a species is. The DNA simply won't "match", so no chemical reaction occurs. On the other hand, when they match closely enough, then the DNA from the cow and the DNA from the bull will combine.

A common ancestor is common to two branches in the tree -- the fork, so to speak. The "Common ancestor" is the great, great,....great grandparent of the two different species in question.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

Isn't that what you're trying to argue? That the layers "could have" been deposited quickly, therefore the Flood is possible? If you agree that some of the layers needed thousands of years or tens of thousands of years or hundreds of thousands of years to form, you can't argue that they were formed by the flood. You can only use layers that could have formed in one year, actually, as evidence of a year-long flood and those layers are simply not worldwide.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about the petrified wood.

That's interesting, your reasoning appeals to me. I don't know enough about global layers that would reflect one year of depositions.

I expect many areas with layers, and many where the ground deposited has been eroded for thousands of years, and other areas where the flood was responsible for removing large areas of deposits.

Eg, there would also be mountains, or their 'skeletons' such as the European alps, that don't have any deposits.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

Ten laws of heaven...you mean the Ten Commandments? I would love to see how you connect those ten laws (pick whichever set, popular or the last quoted) to laws of physics. This will be interesting, to say the least.

"Species" is a manmade construct. We like to categorize and put things in boxes to help us understand them, but nature doesn't work that way. Nature is a big gray area, and doesn't see those divisions. So you will have overlaps. Some just won't flat out work, but some do, and so you get mules, ligers, and other crosses of the lines. But usually there's a break somewhere in their coding that reveals the incompatibility, such ad deficiencies, mutations, and/or sterility.

Yes, the ten commandments are eye openers to many mysteries in nature, because they are a transcript of the Maker's personality. While they only describe the boundaries, within those is a picture of life conditions. Things like balance, equilibrium, relationships etc. I don't want to take the subject up here, but one example is the importance of how forces relate. One of the pioneers of modern science, I think it was Maxwell, discovered the relationship between two distinct forces, electricity and magnetism, it was the wisdom of finding the relationship between the two that unleashed modern em technology. All of the components in nature are based on give and take etc. whether we are talking about the ecosystem or atoms.

What you said about nature's overlapping characteristics is so true, in all areas, from atoms, to chemicals, plants and animals.

You would be familiar with charts and diagrams showing the different relationships and connections of features in animals. These charts work well if you are only looking for some basic features like whether an animal is a mammal or not. But as soon as you introduce other features, you almost have to draw up a new chart for every feature. I have done that experiment with plants, and it is almost like a single chart cannot be drawn, there are too many overlapping and shared features.
In the end you end up with a total mix on many different levels, a grey nature as you put it.

But on the other hand, distinctions are equally as strong. So we have a mysterious mix of distinction and blending of features in the whole of nature.

You''ll notice that atoms are the same, having distinctions and indistinctions.

But the result of shared and unshared features is all part of variety.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

You mean the code of Hammurabi I mentioned in in my last post?? There's your law written in stone. It's 1000 years before the Hebrews catch on.
[CENTER
There are no tablets of Moses. And we know Ea actually came down to Hammurabi and gave him these laws because an eye witness took a picture of it.

As long as you don't forget that that was the heaven of Ea and Anu and Bel and Marduk and Taimat and some 200 other gods. You sure wouldn't want all that heat coming down on you for stealing their laws and calling them the laws of Yahweh. I don't believe any of it, so they can't touch me. But as a believer, you ought to heed their words more carefully. I'd start with a search of the stele of Hammurabi and find out as much as you can, to get your mojo workin, so to speak.
For cryin out loud. They couldn't even take pi to 2 places--we needed the Greeks to give us that. And the Persians, Egyptians and Chinese had astronomy while the Hebrews were sacrificing goats to Asherah (the wife of Jehovah). There's absolutely nothing of value in the Bible concerning science.

I think it makes no sense to try to read any religious text literally. You only need to read scholarly studies on the actual original manuscripts that still exist - to begin to realize that it's silly to take it literally.
Good question, but you have a couple of mistaken assumptions going on there. First of all interspecies breeding is generally not possible simply because that's one way we define what a species is. The DNA simply won't "match", so no chemical reaction occurs. On the other hand, when they match closely enough, then the DNA from the cow and the DNA from the bull will combine.

A common ancestor is common to two branches in the tree -- the fork, so to speak. The "Common ancestor" is the great, great,....great grandparent of the two different species in question.

Which ever way you look at it, nature has an amazing variety of plants and animals, non of which seem obsolete - in a matter of opinion of course.

By the way, the ten commandments were there before Moses was asked to take a copy. For eg, the Sabbath was kept in Eden, the Jews out of Egypt were commanded to keep that day before Moses went to Sinai.

The laws in ancient Assyria were based on those commandments as taught by Noah. The founder of the world's first five civilisations was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah.

 

[sideshowbob]

I expect many areas with layers, and many where the ground deposited has been eroded for thousands of years, and other areas where the flood was responsible for removing large areas of deposits.

The problem is that there are more deposits on top of those erosions. There's a Great Unconformity at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, with a mile of deposits on top of it. You can't have the flood laying down layers and then eroding them and laying down more layers on top of them all in one year. You need a very long time for the first deposits to lithify before they can be eroded. There is no possible way that all of it could be done quickly.

Eg, there would also be mountains, or their 'skeletons' such as the European alps, that don't have any deposits.

It's ALL deposits.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Which ever way you look at it, nature has an amazing variety of plants and animals, non of which seem obsolete - in a matter of opinion of course.

By the way, the ten commandments were there before Moses was asked to take a copy. For eg, the Sabbath was kept in Eden, the Jews out of Egypt were commanded to keep that day before Moses went to Sinai.

The laws in ancient Assyria were based on those commandments as taught by Noah. The founder of the world's first five civilisations was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah.

The fallacy of biblical liberalism includes ignoring that Eden is set near existing cultural sites: the Tigris-Euphrates, the Land of the Kush (Somalia), Nineveh and Ashur (or Ashurbanipal, I think, in some versions), among other things.

Like the problem you have understanding the age of the earth, you also misunderstand the age of the text you think came first. It was about 1000 years later than the Babylonian stele (not Assyrian, although they also precede Hebrews).

Moses does not appear to be a historical figure. It appears to be an Egyptian name, and could refer to the colony on Elephantine - an island in the Nile once occupied by Hebrews.

I presume you know that there was no decimation of Egypt by God, that Rameses' son was not killed, and in fact most of the writings from the Hebrews' neighbors contain facts that burst the bubble of literalism rather handily.

The kings of Persia have been jumbled in Daniel. This indicates that the story was written long after the age of Cyrus the Great (Kooroosh), so long, they forget their history (like you!)

We could compile a laundry list of the impossibilities that occur from reading the text literally, and only as it concerns history.

I would refer to any recognized school of divinity for additional information concerning the dates of any event in the Bible which happens to actually be a historical event (even though they are sometimes mangled). Union Theological Seminary is one that comes to mind.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

The problem is that there are more deposits on top of those erosions. There's a Great Unconformity at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, with a mile of deposits on top of it. You can't have the flood laying down layers and then eroding them and laying down more layers on top of them all in one year. You need a very long time for the first deposits to lithify before they can be eroded. There is no possible way that all of it could be done quickly.


It's ALL deposits.

There's alot that can happen in a year underwater. There is another aspect of the flood that not too many are aware of, but the waters were helped off the land by a wind, a wind that also caused erosions and deposits. The wind was stronger than anything known today.

In regards to layers in stone, some people think that they were all deposited, but there are stones which have hundreds of very fine layers of two or a few variations of the material, which were not created by the flood.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

The fallacy of biblical liberalism includes ignoring that Eden is set near existing cultural sites: the Tigris-Euphrates, the Land of the Kush (Somalia), Nineveh and Ashur (or Ashurbanipal, I think, in some versions), among other things.

Like the problem you have understanding the age of the earth, you also misunderstand the age of the text you think came first. It was about 1000 years later than the Babylonian stele (not Assyrian, although they also precede Hebrews).

Moses does not appear to be a historical figure. It appears to be an Egyptian name, and could refer to the colony on Elephantine - an island in the Nile once occupied by Hebrews.

I presume you know that there was no decimation of Egypt by God, that Rameses' son was not killed, and in fact most of the writings from the Hebrews' neighbors contain facts that burst the bubble of literalism rather handily.

The kings of Persia have been jumbled in Daniel. This indicates that the story was written long after the age of Cyrus the Great (Kooroosh), so long, they forget their history (like you!)

We could compile a laundry list of the impossibilities that occur from reading the text literally, and only as it concerns history.

I would refer to any recognized school of divinity for additional information concerning the dates of any event in the Bible which happens to actually be a historical event (even though they are sometimes mangled). Union Theological Seminary is one that comes to mind.

These institutions are generally not in favour of the Bible, and have been largely responsible for recommending fake versions for Christendom.

Your comments about Biblical history have been around for about 70 yrs, but modern archaeologists of Biblical lands are using scripture as a reference because they are accurate and reliable. The Bible was written by people who lived in those times, yet despite that, today people who only lived a few years,
are boasting more knowledge? They haven't made up their minds how old the Epic of Gilgamesh is anywhere between 5000 and 20000 yrs old?

Noah's ark will be found at a crucial time, it will be on Ararat as it has been since it anchored there. What will the sceptics say then?
They'll probably call it a hoax.

By the way, the situation of Eden lay on the former world in those regions you mention, however Eden was several thousand feet higher than the rivers and landscapes there today. The description in the Bible is to indicate Eden's position on the earth, in relation to the rivers etc there today, but the former land is gone.

According to scripture, the city of heaven is destined to settle in the same spot, putting part of the original garden right above where it was. That part of the earth is called "the side/s of the north."

 

[Aqueous Id]

These institutions are generally not in favour of the Bible, and have been largely responsible for recommending fake versions for Christendom.

That's nuts. They treat the Bible like any other artifact - dating and authenticating the codices, searching for the meaning of words from a dead language, identifying when and where the material was written, and looking into the subtext and the context, in the way of literary analysis. If you are unable to do this yourself, or at least to follow with avid curiosity the way the experts do it, then you are rejecting the nose in front of your face. This is fact-based level of inquiry. You never want to run from facts.

Your comments about Biblical history have been around for about 70 yrs,

I think we can go back to just about any time period and find historians who serve as anchor points. Josephus was one who was contemporary to the Jesus story.

but modern archaeologists of Biblical lands are using scripture as a reference because they are accurate and reliable.

That's nuts too. Archaeologists also understand that the Bible is myth and legend, because they are scientists, and they have to look at all the facts they have objectively. There are some good historical anecdotes in the Bible, but it's laden with defects, too. Anyone who has taken high school level world history probably knows that much.

The Bible was written by people who lived in those times, yet despite that, today people who only lived a few years,are boasting more knowledge?

Nuts again. There's nothing to boast about. It has to do with analyzing the Bible as an artifact, and testing the historical content it contains against the rest of the histories from around the world. I presume you know there are literature from Mesopotamia and Egypt that are much more reliable, in that they can be dated, and they are preserved (without the copy errors).

They haven't made up their minds how old the Epic of Gilgamesh is anywhere between 5000 and 20000 yrs old?

What makes you say that?

Noah's ark will be found at a crucial time, it will be on Ararat as it has been since it anchored there. What will the sceptics say then? They'll probably call it a hoax.

There was no Ark. It's a myth. You are simply in error by forcing a literal interpretation on this particular ancient artifact. You could just as well force a literal interpretation of the Gilgamesh Epic, or any other ancient myth.

By the way, the situation of Eden lay on the former world in those regions you mention, however Eden was several thousand feet higher than the rivers and landscapes there today. The description in the Bible is to indicate Eden's position on the earth, in relation to the rivers etc there today, but the former land is gone.

That's impossible. There would be evidence of such. Besides, it doesn't speak to my point, that the references to the Tigris-Euphrates and the land of the Kush are clues that Genesis was written much later than you think. Eden is a myth. It's ludicrous to view it as a literal truth. You are forcing a conclusion that requires dismissing all of the abundance of knowledge that informs a normal person that this is nothing more than myth.

According to scripture, the city of heaven is destined to settle in the same spot, putting part of the original garden right above where it was. That part of the earth is called "the side/s of the north."

The stuff of legends. Find me a river that connects the Tigris Euphrates to the land of the Kush and I'll eat my hat.

Tell me the actual age of the oldest artifact containing your scripture, and then tell me the age of the oldest artifacts I've been talking about, and then we will be on the road to discovering a fundamental fact that is crucial to the question of Biblical literalism.

 

[sideshowbob]

There's alot that can happen in a year underwater.

There's also a lot that can NOT happen. The burrows, tracks, erosion, etc. which I have already mentioned cannot happen under water.

There is another aspect of the flood that not too many are aware of, but the waters were helped off the land by a wind, a wind that also caused erosions and deposits. The wind was stronger than anything known today.

You're reading an awful lot into a wind that is barely mentioned at all in the Bible:

Gen 8:1-3 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.​

But even if the Bible agreed with you, you're just multiplying your own problems. Now you have a giant flood that left no evidence and was never repeated AND you have a giant wind that left no evidence and was never repeated. You're just slapping on another ad hoc miracle to plug another hole in the dike.

In regards to layers in stone, some people think that they were all deposited, but there are stones which have hundreds of very fine layers of two or a few variations of the material, which were not created by the flood.

Yes, it's obvious that there are some layers that were not deposited by the Flood. The problem you have is that there are many areas in the world where there is no evidence of ANY layers that could have been deposited by the Flood. You need a WORLDWIDE flood layer as evidence of a worldwide flood and you seem to understand that there isn't one. You might as well stop trying to defend the Flood in any kind of scientific terms and just say it was a miracle.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Your comments about Biblical history have been around for about 70 yrs, but modern archaeologists of Biblical lands are using scripture as a reference because they are accurate and reliable.

Huh??? You do know that there were other literate people in the Middle East at that time, don't you? The writings of the Hebrews are not the only journals of the events of the era.

It's already been settled that there was no such thing as "captivity in Egypt." The Hebrews were guest workers who, like thousands of other people in the lands near Egypt, were attracted by the prospect of jobs. Why would the Egyptians bother with the tremendous effort and expense of enslaving people and guarding them, when they were walking up and asking to do the work?

They haven't made up their minds how old the Epic of Gilgamesh is anywhere between 5000 and 20000 yrs old?

There were no civilizations before 9000BCE so there were no kings, no armies. Just small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers, with the first tiny agricultural villages springing up at the cusp between the Paelolithic and Neolithic Eras--the "Early Stone Age" and "Late Stone Age."

There was no metallurgy before 3500BCE, so the tools and technology needed by a complex system of government did not exist. People built, farmed, worked and fought with tools of stone and wood. Wooden clubs and flint knives, arrowheads and spearpoints, with no body armor, do not give any civilization the ability to make war as we know it. Bronze swords and armor were the first "weapons of mass destruction."

So if Gilgamesh was a real historical person, his story cannot be much older than 5,000 years. It's likely that he is a stylized amalgamation of the stories of several powerful leaders, as his story was told and retold over the generations.

Noah's ark will be found at a crucial time, it will be on Ararat as it has been since it anchored there.

Mount Ararat is in the middle of a densely populated country and is not very rugged. If there was a large boat there it would have been found by now--by accident if nothing else.

What will the sceptics say then? They'll probably call it a hoax.

It's not too difficult to authenticate ancient artifacts. We can analyze the DNA of the wood to determine if it's made from a modern cultivar of a species of tree, or a genuine heirloom variety.

By the way, the situation of Eden lay on the former world in those regions you mention, however Eden was several thousand feet higher than the rivers and landscapes there today. The description in the Bible is to indicate Eden's position on the earth, in relation to the rivers etc there today, but the former land is gone. According to scripture, the city of heaven is destined to settle in the same spot, putting part of the original garden right above where it was. That part of the earth is called "the side/s of the north."

Your posts in other discussions have led me to believe that you're an educated, rational person. I am disappointed to learn that you reject science and believe in a world of fantasy and superstition.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

Huh??? You do know that there were other literate people in the Middle East at that time, don't you? The writings of the Hebrews are not the only journals of the events of the era.

It's already been settled that there was no such thing as "captivity in Egypt." The Hebrews were guest workers who, like thousands of other people in the lands near Egypt, were attracted by the prospect of jobs. Why would the Egyptians bother with the tremendous effort and expense of enslaving people and guarding them, when they were walking up and asking to do the work?

There were no civilizations before 9000BCE so there were no kings, no armies. Just small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers, with the first tiny agricultural villages springing up at the cusp between the Paelolithic and Neolithic Eras--the "Early Stone Age" and "Late Stone Age."

There was no metallurgy before 3500BCE, so the tools and technology needed by a complex system of government did not exist. People built, farmed, worked and fought with tools of stone and wood. Wooden clubs and flint knives, arrowheads and spearpoints, with no body armor, do not give any civilization the ability to make war as we know it. Bronze swords and armor were the first "weapons of mass destruction."

So if Gilgamesh was a real historical person, his story cannot be much older than 5,000 years. It's likely that he is a stylized amalgamation of the stories of several powerful leaders, as his story was told and retold over the generations.

Mount Ararat is in the middle of a densely populated country and is not very rugged. If there was a large boat there it would have been found by now--by accident if nothing else.

It's not too difficult to authenticate ancient artifacts. We can analyze the DNA of the wood to determine if it's made from a modern cultivar of a species of tree, or a genuine heirloom variety.

Your posts in other discussions have led me to believe that you're an educated, rational person. I am disappointed to learn that you reject science and believe in a world of fantasy and superstition.

I was hoping that by talking about the past, we could understand the future. Since science has rewritten history, knowledge of the present and future remains closed.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

There's also a lot that can NOT happen. The burrows, tracks, erosion, etc. which I have already mentioned cannot happen under water.


You're reading an awful lot into a wind that is barely mentioned at all in the Bible:

Gen 8:1-3 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.​

But even if the Bible agreed with you, you're just multiplying your own problems. Now you have a giant flood that left no evidence and was never repeated AND you have a giant wind that left no evidence and was never repeated. You're just slapping on another ad hoc miracle to plug another hole in the dike.


Yes, it's obvious that there are some layers that were not deposited by the Flood. The problem you have is that there are many areas in the world where there is no evidence of ANY layers that could have been deposited by the Flood. You need a WORLDWIDE flood layer as evidence of a worldwide flood and you seem to understand that there isn't one. You might as well stop trying to defend the Flood in any kind of scientific terms and just say it was a miracle.

You are wise for looking up the text. It took a long while to cause the waters to abate. As the levels went down, the speed of the currents went up, and even after the waters were off the land, the wind increased in speed, eroding and burying things under sand and dust.

 

[Gerhard Kemmerer]

That's nuts. They treat the Bible like any other artifact - dating and authenticating the codices, searching for the meaning of words from a dead language, identifying when and where the material was written, and looking into the subtext and the context, in the way of literary analysis. If you are unable to do this yourself, or at least to follow with avid curiosity the way the experts do it, then you are rejecting the nose in front of your face. This is fact-based level of inquiry. You never want to run from facts.


I think we can go back to just about any time period and find historians who serve as anchor points. Josephus was one who was contemporary to the Jesus story.


That's nuts too. Archaeologists also understand that the Bible is myth and legend, because they are scientists, and they have to look at all the facts they have objectively. There are some good historical anecdotes in the Bible, but it's laden with defects, too. Anyone who has taken high school level world history probably knows that much.


Nuts again. There's nothing to boast about. It has to do with analyzing the Bible as an artifact, and testing the historical content it contains against the rest of the histories from around the world. I presume you know there are literature from Mesopotamia and Egypt that are much more reliable, in that they can be dated, and they are preserved (without the copy errors).


What makes you say that?


There was no Ark. It's a myth. You are simply in error by forcing a literal interpretation on this particular ancient artifact. You could just as well force a literal interpretation of the Gilgamesh Epic, or any other ancient myth.

That's impossible. There would be evidence of such. Besides, it doesn't speak to my point, that the references to the Tigris-Euphrates and the land of the Kush are clues that Genesis was written much later than you think. Eden is a myth. It's ludicrous to view it as a literal truth. You are forcing a conclusion that requires dismissing all of the abundance of knowledge that informs a normal person that this is nothing more than myth.


The stuff of legends. Find me a river that connects the Tigris Euphrates to the land of the Kush and I'll eat my hat.

Tell me the actual age of the oldest artifact containing your scripture, and then tell me the age of the oldest artifacts I've been talking about, and then we will be on the road to discovering a fundamental fact that is crucial to the question of Biblical literalism.

Those who treat the Bible like any other artifact, have not subjected themselves to its Authority, and therefore cannot enter into an experience that connects them with the Source of truth. Until any reader is willing to be open to its instructions, they cannot know any better than they do, and stay unchanged in their mindset, and therefore unchanged in personality and character. If those scholars are willing to burn at the stake for their research, I'll take more notice of what they are saying. But they are not worthy to even touch the Book that cost so much to preserve.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

I respect your religious belief,
and I agree that reading the Bible changes people's lives for the better,
but trying to make religion fit with science does not work.
It's a different discipline, and trying to cobble them together is dishonest.

Religion and Science.
Politics and Religion.
Politics and Science.
Same applies. They don't mix.

 

[Rhaedas]

Those who treat the Bible like any other artifact, have not subjected themselves to its Authority, and therefore cannot enter into an experience that connects them with the Source of truth. Until any reader is willing to be open to its instructions, they cannot know any better than they do, and stay unchanged in their mindset, and therefore unchanged in personality and character.

Circular. To believe something because it says it's the truth. Much more reliable to trust in correlation of independent sources, and this is one place where the Bible fails often.

If those scholars are willing to burn at the stake for their research, I'll take more notice of what they are saying.

Why so harsh? Is burning at the stake a good test of commitment? How does that test the actual claim? I hope you're being metaphorical.

But they are not worthy to even touch the Book that cost so much to preserve.

Preserve. That's funny. Which version? What of parts of the original that got tossed since they didn't fit the religious/political goals of the time?