Here’s Michael Shermer interviewing a PhD at the Creation Museum. She seems very intelligent, it’s a shame she can’t get past a creationist interpretation.
It’s frustrating to see someone who has so much knowledge still be a godbot. She’s not looking for truth — there’s no way she can be wrong. She can only defend what some ancient book says, because that is her source of truth.
(via)
She flubs majorly by insisting that she does NO interpretation. Even when I belonged to a creationist church, they didn’t claim this. They claimed that they had the correct interpretation, and defended that position through historical and Biblical arguments.
This was posted on Charles Johnson’s website awhile back and there was some speculation from resident scientists on that site that the scientist questioned in this piece may be one of the first ID “plants”. I don’t know if this is true but peeps there were saying that the ID movement recruited bright high school students sympathetic to creationism to take up science in college. The intent was the ID movement would then have degreed scientists in its camp to support its ideology. I think they were pretty sure this was the ID plan, they just weren’t sure if she was one of their graduates or not.
Ahh, but intelligent and wisdom are not the same thing: Intelligence tells you it’s raining; wisdom tells you to get out of the rain to avoid getting wet.
I’ve seen this video before; I would bet my left testicle that she’s not a PhD in any science at all. She lyin’ fo’ Jeeeeeebus, I’m afraid.
She’s amazingly adept and avoiding true critical thought and reverts quite naturally to parroting indoctrinated dogma in its place. To watch the whole thing is equal parts astonishing and painful.
Nice little site you have here, and thanks for the link back.
Super J.
What really hit me about this interview is how honest intellectual inquiry works versus pseudo-intellectual inquiry.
Honest intellectual inquiry says, “hey, I don’t know the answer, but lets understand all the data available to see where we get to”. Pseudo-intellectual inquiry starts with the answer, and then proceeds to accept only the data that corroborates that answer. Both approaches require significant brainpower, except that one approach is honest, and the other is an utter sham.
Some time ago I wrote my own posting about that “Museum” ( http://www.uglydoggy.com/2007/09/sci-fi-goes-museum.html )
To me that sounds crazy, it’s just a shame that they allowed a place like that to be called “Museum”. Creationland would be more appropriate or Bibleland but not Museum.
It is like an insult for real museums.
She may know somethings but she doesn’t know how to think critically. People like this just confirm what Shermer himself has long said: Smart people are good at coming to believe in things for non-smart reasons. In other words, smart people are often good rationalizers.
I laughed at some of the stuff she said at the beginning.
“I look at how organisms start out good, then became bad.”
“That sounds like evolution?”
“No, its not evolution, we are just trying to understand how they change.”
Hello? Organisms changing = evolution.
Understanding how organisms change through genetics = evolution.
I turned it off after that. I would not be able to stand 24 minutes of stupidity.
Interesting…the video is “no longer available.”
The fact is that someone is right and someone is wrong!Who’s to say that you or Mr. Shermer are right? Who’s to day that evolutionists have not taken the fossil record and inserted your own views concerning the answers? There is no doubt that there is a fossil record.
The problem arises when the record is used to foist a godless agenda on the human race in order to appease your consciences. If you can eliminate God, then you can manufacture your own standards for life, decency ect. And these usually involve the majority opinion, or whatever is right for each individual person or as the bible states it; “everyone doing what is right in their own eyes.
The rationalizer statement made by jamesatracy can be applied to the very intelligent people on your side as well and your side too parrots the indoctrinated dogma of evolution…even on this post. Transparent ruse; do you have any evidence for this? other than your own preconceptions?
Anyone who would think to do something so stupid as what you suggest is indeed engaging in a ruse. If this is the truth then once again we have an example of why people think Christians are fools!
You are indeed right when you state that Christianity and Evolution do not mix. They are exact opposites of each other.
But do you lump all Christians, those who believe in and trust in The Living God who has revealed Himself in His living Word together with your “Flintstones” theology? Do you cast out all historical and archeological evidence in favor of your extraordinary claim of evolution as a fact:
that everything we see and know just happened through
“evolutionary” processes? Are we a series of cosmic accidents? Do you consider yourself to be an accident?
If you indeed mean what you say, then you have just accused every Christian on the face of the earth, every Christian, past present and future of propagating a lie and engaging in known or unknown falsehood. In fact, you have just declared that we are the worst of all people because we are, according to you, spreading a lie!
I lost my footing here and my credibility, rejected. “test” requires no further explanation, even accidents, my regrets for all my words since I first post here, I take back my words with a humble pie.
Utube video is still working and taking back of my words still stand in the light of “test”.
I wish I had been there to put the screws to her. Shermer went light on her! I would have asked her to explain pseudo genes, transposons, etc. I would have asked her about the speed of light and the observation of distant universes. I would have asked her about the Noah story in detail– given the millions of species all over the world, how exactly did Noah fit them all in his tiny boat?
I would have asked if there were dinosaurs in the boat and if so what happened to them!
Then I would have thoroughly put the smackdown on her!
Living hominidae Ken Ham did speak unreservedly about dinosaurs, then it is still the expression “oh my! I should have seen it coming.”
Re Intelligent Design, is it OK to post a relevant cartoon from the Unspeakable Vault? http://www.macguff.fr/goomi/unspeakable/vault292.html
On a different note, I have concerns with a renowned university awarding a PhD in Molecular Genetics to someone who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old because the Bible says so.
Granted, Ohio State’s charter probably mimics Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, and requires no religious test for admission or graduation. But I would think the university’s desire to be considered a top institution of higher learning would have them squirming uncomfortably in their seats every time she mentions her alma mater.
What about the people living in remote (jungles) areas that have had no exposure to, and/or “accepted jesus, and have lived and died in the past 2 thousand years? I guess hell’s going to be a crowded place.
This woman does not understand faith. Faith says, we do not know the answers, but we trust and believe that they are the truth. That is the point. To trust without the proof in the Bible.
But every time she opens her mouth, she claims that we ‘know the Bible is true’. how do we know that? “Because it is. It is the word of God.” You certainly can’t have an intelligent conversation with someone who so willingly and blindy regurgitates without ever really understanding that faith is a mystery. You CAN NOT know the answers, you can only hope you do.
This woman may know less about Christianity than she knows about science.
Bet she subscribes to this periodical…
http://doctore.blog.is/users/b4/doctore/img/el-gran-poco.jpg
Great, Now I have to kill myself. I can’t live on the same planet as that “scientist.” I’m sure Ohio State was real psyched for the plug they got.
PML PML
Here are some pics from a Creationist Museum in CA. The 40 million cowboy boots “disproving” the accuracy of fossil dating and the British crusaders fighting off dinosaurs with rocks are too funny.
http://www.ringospictures.com/index.php?page=20090320
Lots of Bible versus used to support creationism. Kind of amazing how much effort was put into promoting a falsehood – YEC.
Fun fact: Many infectious diseases are obligate human pathogens, meaning they cannot survive outside the human body. This means that for those diseases (in the form of bacteria and vira) to have survived the Biblical flood they must have infected the human residents of the ark. Noah and his family would’ve had all manners of venereal diseases, like gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia. Yeah, I can totally see why God would choose this virtuous family.
Also, they must’ve been infected with smallpox, tuberculosis, pneumonia, meningitis, plus many other diseases, some of them fatal.
Can’t find the reply button.
“YOU ARE GOD TO US!”
How do you know what that pope meant with the word “God”-(elohim or ortheos), what is God’s name?
Supernatural argument as it is.
I try to give my intellectual opponents an open-minded airing of their views. But this woman’s voice is so obnoxious I couldn’t get past the 4 minute mark. It’s more grating than the irritating things she is saying.
This is not meant to be insensitive, but is she hard of hearing? She has “that voice”.
A lot of you seem to have made it through the entire video. I applaud your tenacity.
6,000 year old earth, huh? So, the dinosaurs were roaming around with the people yet there is no documentation of them whatsoever? And they just lived here for a short while and then went extinct all of a sudden?
:-/ ??????
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TthHltjrvA&feature=related
For Voice and other biblical literalists, I offer up to you this video from Yale professor Christine Hayes:
http://academicearth.org/lectures/genesis-12-50
However, “Creationland” or “Bibleland” doesn’t help it to achieve the credibility and legitimacy it desperately craves.
It’s not really an insult; just kind of sad. Most people can see it for the transparent ruse it is.
“It is like an insult for real museums.”
Just for the record, this started a huge row in the museum community. I don’t think it could operate in a state like NY, which actually considers museums a type of educational institution. The “Creation Museum” would never get chartered here.
Evolution is a fact that has nothing to do with Creationism; it exists and occurs whether we were created or not.
Any building that has a model of a dinosaur with a saddle on its back, and the word “museum” above the door without the word “Flintstones” in front of it, is engaging in a ruse.
PARROT (n): 1. to repeat or imitate without thought or understanding.
2. to teach to repeat or imitate in such a fashion.
To say “your side too parrots the indoctrinated dogma of evolution” is to mis-understand or wantonly misuse the dictionary definition of the term “parrot”.
Inherent in the nature of Science and scientists is the constant seeking for knowledge and understanding of the subjects studied. If an experiment is carried out and returns unexpected results, those too are written up, not swept under the carpet. Science does not make up the ‘required’ outcome beforehand then fraudulently tout said outcome irrespective of actual test results.
It is my experience of xians, however, that they will go on repeating the same creationist doggerel over and over again because some other xian/s told them it was true and that, moreover, evolution is ee-vill – and not because they actually understand the issues or have firm evidence for their creationist standpoint.
Pieces of eight, anyone?
That’s so wrong and deluded I don’t know where to begin setting you straight. It’s not possible to set you straight.
Evolution isn’t dogma. ( a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds)
It isn’t indoctrinated. ( to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle)
We don’t parrot it.
Science continues to seek more facts, to evaluate, and revise theories as more is known.
Your irrational ASSumption-loaded sentence does seem to describe christianity, and you, much better.
OK, what else in your sentence was non-factual and assumption-loaded? Any denotative fact remaining after removing the name-calling and assumptions? Oh, that’s all there was! There’s nothing left.
1. I don’t think all Christians are fools. It would seem, however, that the people operating the Creation Museum in Kentucky are banking on it:
Given that visitors should:
I think we can infer the saddle on the dinosaur is less tourist gimmick and more symbolic assertion.
2. Christianity and Evolution are not exact opposites. Evolution exists and occurs whether we were created or not.
3. The Flintstones remark referred to the building.
4. Ever played Bridge? Four players get dealt thirteen cards each. Do you know what the odds are of getting dealt all Hearts? Approximately 1 in 600 billion. While that might seem like a person was dealt those thirteen cards by design, it is a merely a matter of probability, and simply a matter of time before some Bridge player somewhere gets dealt a full suit of cards.
And don’t forget, millions of Bridge players have been dealt billions of hands with thirteen seemingly random cards that all had the same 1 in 600 billion odds of coming together on that deal.
We’re not accidents; we are a 1 in N billion chance that one of the zillion planets in one of the trillion galaxies could support life. And that life has evolved, by natural selection, into the tens of millions of different species (us included) this ecosystem we call Earth is currently capable of supporting.
(I’d like to thank the Academy…)
I think that calling it a “lie” is too harsh a word. It only becomes a “lie” when someone has ample evidence indicating something to the contrary and chooses to tell it as truth anyway.
Christians as a group are not liars. Many who profess belief in Creation when they know that evidence to the contrary, well, even they are not liars, so long as they maintain that it is a belief. The only liars are those who know that evidence their is overwhelming evidence to the contrary, yet still manage to profess their “beliefs” as “truth” are the genuine liars.
You are spreading the word of something you believe to be true; that is much different than something you know to be false.
Christ, if he existed, existed two thousand years ago. Nobody in 2009 can know for certain anything about that time.
Now, L. Ron Hubbard, for example… he told people 60 years ago he couldn’t get rich selling sci-fi novels, and that creating a religion would be a better way of making money. Then he created a religion based on science fiction and spread the word.
That’s propagating a lie.
Woooo, boy. Care to present the evidence and proof of the existence and properties of this alleged living god of yours? Care to provide scientific evidence that disproves evolution?
I dont’ think christians are liars, I think that they haven’t examined the scientific evidence. I think the lady in the video is possibly a liar, but I’d have to question her more thoroughly myself before I could come to that conclusion. I think she’s weasling through the semantics of what she says as a way of preserving face. Organisms changing over time are evolving. She tries to redefine this– but it’s a semantics game (she really needs to take a course on the philosophy of language… big time!!!!)
@Amii:
I think it’s safe to assume that almost every, if not every Christian is a compromiser to one degree or another.
We used to pray about knotty situations in order to “get in a right relationship with god”, then claim either “god laid it on my heart to do xyz,” (if we wanted to do something that might otherwise be outlawed), or “I’m right with god about that,” (if we wanted to carry on doing something we shouldn’t).
I must stress, we firmly believed our own lies to ourselves and believed the answers we received were of God, not from within our own psyches.
(By “we” I mean myself and others who have since left that church. I don’t claim every xian or ex-xian would agree with me).
The Creation Institute sounds like part kiddie amusement park. At least from what you say they are seeking to appeal to the kids, probably in order to increase revenue.
Creation and evolution are exact opposites. Creation is a biblical view that states “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In other words God created everything that has ever existed and ever will exist.
Evolution as you have stated it declares that all things exist without any God. Indeed, evolutionists per se have no use for any concept of a God and speak of evolution as the reason for the existence of the “tens of millions of different species (us included) this ecosystem we call Earth is currently capable of supporting.”
Life as it occurs on earth is more than some chance/circumstance game of bridge. Your analogy sounds like a crapshoot to me…”we are a one in 10 billion chance” chance being the operating word here.
Continue to take your bows is you please!
Please indulge me for a moment. Did I understand you correctly…that if I am stating that I believe something when I know the evidence is to the contrary, I am not a liar? What is the defenition of a lie? Is it not “a gross falisification or missrepresentation of the facts?
So if I tell you that there is a real living God, that the Bible is the Word of God and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God when I know this to be false, does that not make me a liar?
Only in our post modern world are we able to make a gray areay out of a black and white issue.
Spreading a delusion
You have absolutely no idea what the concept of evolution is.
I would encourage you to read up on it before making claims like, “Creation and evolution are exact opposites” that embarrass your fellow Christians.
“Evolution as you have stated it declares that all things exist without any God.”
Incorrect. Science makes NO claims about god. Period. Evolution states that genetic mutations occur randomly (and they do- we can and HAVE observed that– ie UV ray hits dna and damages it– later when the dna is transcribed or replicated the damage causes a copy error). After a random mutation, the DNA is changed. Therefore its products (proteins) are also changed. After multiple errors over vast spans of time, this little bits of change add up.
Perhaps God controls the evolution of life through the process of randomization, perhaps not (biological scientists can’t say one way or the other). But randomization is not a disputable fact.
You don’t know it to be true or false for certain; none of us do. That really is the whole point. It’s a faith-based assertion.
And since you brought it up, belief in gods has been humankind’s definitive grey area.
If you tell me that you BELIEVE it, despite evidence to the contrary, you are not lying as you are stating a truth as to your belief.
If you don’t believe it, but state it as a TRUTH, then you are lying.
They aren’t being post-modern, they’re talking about epistemology.
Epistemology 101:
Knowledge has three components:
It is true/can be verified (different from Truth)
It is justifiable
It is believed.
Faith has only the third component. Scientific knowledge has all three.
That’s what struck me too. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
This also blew me away. Evolution doesn’t mean a massive changing of one organism into a completely different organism- it’s usually more subtle changes to keep the organism able to survive in it’s changing surroundings. And evolution is an ongoing process- how does she know what the organism she’s studying will eventually become?
This woman makes me want to bang my head against walls.
*Sidebar: On the topic of Evolution… for anyone out there who lives in the Los Angeles area- they’ve recently discovered a new Wooly Mammoth by the LeBrea Tarpits. I took my son to go watch them clean off the bones at the Page Museum, and it’s really amazing! It’s a small, but impressive museum- and there are art and natural history museums right in the area. I give it a thumbs up!
I knew you’d have something profoundly biological to say here…
Even Hawking did not rule out the possibility of a creator God. See http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/hawking.htmlthis article*.
Creationism and evolution are NOT opposites. Creationism does not allow for evolution; however evolution allows for there to still be a god as first cause (or, more accurately, does not disallow for there to be a god as first cause).
[* I am aware there are other articles which state the contrary].
In fact, speaking of randomness, let me just put this out there:
Given the uncertainty principle in physics (such as how atomic/subatomic particles will decay, etc.), I have always wondered if it may be possible that this is the mechanism by which a creator/god (assuming there is one) could control the universe. Are there any physicists out there that care to discuss this further?
It may just be a lame god of the gaps thing, but I’d love to learn more…
This sounds a little hokey to me. Science generally holds that a position is unwarranted until there’s objective, examinable, reviewed evidence for it. Gods have no evidence for them, so science, while not saying anything about gods directly, says that the position of belief in them should not be held.
Actually, no. Science’s domain is the natural world. Anything beyond that (supernatural/metaphysical– which literally means beyond the physical) is beyond the scope of science. Therefore, science has nothing to contribute to the existence of god discussion.
“But these men are compromisers, trying to make peace with the Scientific community at the expense of their consciences…if they are indeed Christians.”
@VOTW
Was that a true Scotsman I saw peeping there?
I think it’s safe to assume that almost every, if not every Christian is a compromiser to one degree or another. Otherwise there would be mob violence every time a woman went out in a red dress, or stonings after every football game.
So when I asked physicists to maybe engage in a convo about subatomic decay and uncertainty, I was thinking along these lines…
http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/2641/subatomic-particles-have-free-will
Why do I believe what I believe to be true? It is due to the overwhelming facts, historical and archeological. And it is also because I know Him! Jesus Himself is the truth. His word is truth. So when I spread the word about Jesus I am telling the truth.!
Would you consider the message of the Bible to be a lie? You just said that it is my belief. And the implication is that ‘if it works for me, more power to me.”
You stated “Christ, if He ever existed, existed 2000 years ago…” Do you have any trouble believing the existence of Plato or Socrates or Aristotle? These men were actually alive between 450 and 322 B.C. I actually believe they were living men. Indeed, their philosophical writings live on even today and nobody says, “I don’t believe these men ever existed.” Nobody is saying, “I don’t believe they ever wrote anything.”
It is only Jesus Christ whom people say these things about. It is only the Bible which could not possibly be true! And why is that? Mr. Florien stated “It is because of the extraordinary claims made in the Bible and by Jesus Himself. (paraphrased)
The real problem is that Jesus made some very exclusive statements and we just don’t like to be told what to do, do we! We want to be free to live our own lives without anybody telling us “You’re wrong.” We don’t want anybody messin in our business.
Jesus. speaking as He does in the Bible just rubs people the wrong way. He tells people that if they do certain things they’re wrong. If they act certain ways, they’re wrong. He tells them that there is only one way to heaven and He’s it. Christianity is a “There’s only one way” religion. While other religions mention Jesus as a way, a guru, a prophet, or an ascended master, Jesus says “I’m It! Was He lying?
But along with all of the do’s and don’t's in the Bible there is the message that God had mercy upon people who were His enemies. He came to earth and lived, died and rose again for sinners like you and me to pay the unpayable debt we owed for our lawless lives.
We had lived as rebels against God and had broken every one of His laws several times over. We were guilty and already sentenced to death…but God had mercy on us and took our place, paid our debt…He Himself made the one and only way for us to be exonerated of our crimes.
This is more than something I believe to be true…This is the truth from God Himself!
“It is due to the overwhelming facts, historical and archeological.”
Can you please point me to those facts? What are your sources? I’d like to read them for myself.
Oh no, not an overwhelming historical and archeological facts argument.
LRA: he’s all yours.
“Why do I believe what I believe to be true? It is due to the overwhelming facts, historical and archeological. And it is also because I know Him! Jesus Himself is the truth. His word is truth. So when I spread the word about Jesus I am telling the truth.!”
You don’t KNOW Jesus. You don’t KNOW God. You have faith that they exist. There is a massive difference between faith and fact.
There is nothing wrong with having faith in something- but that faith doesn’t make it a modern day living entity.
Strong faith can FEEL like fact… but facts can be proven. God cannot be proven.
Until Jesus knocks on your door, introduces himself, and shakes your hand- you don’t KNOW him. And if you think that you have actually met him and shook his hand- then I think you need to add some medication to your faith.
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had published works, and their existence is noted in public records. The same cannot be said for Jesus Christ. People referred to Jesus in the Bibles that were written many years after his death. It’s hearsay.
I heartily disagree with the tragic old accusation that atheists just don’t want to do what their told. Christians don’t do what their told as often as anyone else. This is such a transparent, reactionary argument. You’re projecting.
I reject your implication that I am Jesus’ enemy based on my atheism. I have no agenda against him. My only agenda with regard to Jesus is that his followers leave me be. I don’t try to convert them, pass laws to make them conform to my agenda and I don’t try to feed their children irrelevant, harmful and outright false information in classrooms.
He tells them that there is only one way to heaven and He’s it.
Who’s “he”? I believe you mean Jesus, because of obvious context, and because I’m not an idiot.
However, I understand Jim Jones claimed the same thing, and so did David Koresh.
If Jesus did say that, it was a long time ago; accounts in the bible are second, third (or nth) hand, written years after Jesus’s death, and cannot be verified for authenticity or accuracy.
Accounts of Jones’s and Koresh’s “ministries” are recent, some are written by first-hand survivors, and in general, are held to be valid (notwithstanding there are questions as to the neutrality of some reports).
Even so, I am not at all inclined to believe that Jones or Koresh were the messiah, and/or the way to heaven. Not even slightly. Even though they said they were.
RogER…the ceiling cat says your incessent use of the word “woo” is getting old, he wants to know if you can come up with something new?
PS…I told him not to call you Rog any more too, said you weren’t much for nickname’s, lol.
Fun, fun, fun till your daddy took the t-bird away…
RogER over & out.
Consider first these historical documents which establish the historicity of Jesus Christ. I have only included 3.
Josephus mentions Jesus in his Antiquity of the Jews and the only line in question is the statement, “He was the Messiah.” Josephus being a Jewish Priest probably wouldn’t say such a thing and there is no evidence that he was an undercover Christian. He, like most Jews would have rejected Christ as their Messiah because Jesus didn’t fit the pharisaical mold of conquering king but rather came as Isaiah’s suffering servant.
Isaiah, incidentally, wrote in the 8th century B.C. The fact is that Josephus mentions Jesus the man. And even if we were to take the later Septuragint writings, (ordered by decree of Ptolmais Philadelphus) the prophesy stands at at least 250 years before Christ.
Couple this with the facts that, rather than 50 to 100 years after the fact, the first Gospel (Mark) was actually written 25 years after the resurrection of Jesus and that of the Apostle Paul who wrote his first letter in A.D 52, just 20 years after the resurrection and you have recent document, recent to the event.
Tacitus, writing around 100 or so A.D was a Roman Senator and Historian. Again, there is no evidence here of Christian collusion. Tacitus simply states historical facts, that: “Consequently, to get rid of the report, (that Nero had burned Rome) Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”
Then there is Pliny the Younger, a Roman Governor who had nothing to gain by the mention of Christ. Indeed in his writings he states that he was killing Christians, because they were Christians. He was actually writing to the Emperor for direction in how to deal with these pesky Christians who wouldn’t deny their faith even if it meant death.
Again let me state the fact that nobody has a problem with the writings of Socrates, (469 BC–399 BC) Plato (428/427 BC or 348/347 BC the dates are in dispute ),or Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC). They don’t deny that these men existed and point to their writings and the impact these writings have made in the world.
But the Bible makes extraordinary claims…Jesus made extraordinary claims. And yet when you look at the accuracy of history as it is declared in the bible and supported by archeology and when you consider the fact that the prophesies of the bible have come true thus far without one error you have an extraordinary book whose author is none other than God.
It is only now, especially in our ‘post modern’ world where ‘absolutes’ are thrown out in favor of whatever the popular view or the majority view may be at the time, it is easy to engage in historical revisionism to support ones own truth claims.
Well Voice did claim he was going to post scientific evidence for his god a few weeks ago — obviously what he posted was nothing of the sort but I think that’s to be expected on the grounds that there is zero scientific evidence in support of creationism. (It never cease to amaze me how creationists think that by “dis-proving” evolution that have proved there own theory.) The lesson I’ve learned from this is that a common godbot tact is to claim scientific evidence, post something totally different, basically ignore any evidence (sorry interpret with their own worldview), disappear for a few weeks and the return as if nothing had happened and start with the same old arguments again. Another common misunderstanding — asking the same daft questions over and over until you find someone who can’t answer does not mean you are right.
Point taken.
I suppose if I were the curator for the AMNH, I’d be freaking out at their use of the word “museum.”
I said distant universes and I mean galaxies! Oops– wasn’t being a string theorist there!
For some reason, I think if you were the interviewer, LRA, it would have ended with you trying to strangle her in frustration. ;)
Keep in mind that Noah’s ark may have very well been parabolic in nature. Christ often spoke in illustrative heavenly language (parables) since we had lost our ability to comprehend divine truth.
As I stated yesterday I will deal with your “Noah’s Ark” question/statement.
The Bible gives the dimensions of the ark; Ge 6:14-17 “Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 “This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16 “You shall make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and set the door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it with lower, second, and third decks.
To quote Bill Cosby, “Right. What’s a cubit?” A cubit is a unit of measure from the elbow to the fingertips. The Greek Cubit was 24 inches long and the Roman cubit was 17.5. Now we can take either but just for fun lets pick the one in the middle. In other words lets go with a measurement of 20.5 inches. Now understand that from the Biblical description it was 300 cubits long, fifty wide and thirty tall. In feet that would come out to about 600 feet long, 100 wide, and 60 tall. With the three decks we would come out to a capacity of 3.6 million cubic feet of space. Now consider the average railroad cattle car. Such a car can hold 18 to 20 cows, or 60 to 80 hogs or 80 to 100 sheep. Now consider that 1000 such railroad cars could be stored away on Noah’s ark. In other words, this ‘little boat’ as you say could really hold a lot.
Now as a scientist you can do the math and figure out how many pairs of animals, (not all are as large as elephants) could fit inside a ship with 3.6 million cubic feet of space. And just as an aside, Chuck Darwin, speaking of the pigeon found that if the almost endless varieties of pigeons were allowed to breed together, they went back to the rock pigeon; therefore if there were 7 rock pigeons on the ark, there were thousands of varieties preserved.
Were dinosaurs on the Ark? If not this would explain their mass extinction. But then there is the book of Job which and the two creatures that really cannot be classified as regular animals. There is the Behemoth who swings his tail like a cedar. Some people who would deny the existence of dinosaurs try to say that this is a hippopotamus. Unfortunately for them the hippo only has a stupid little nub of a tail. No cedar here.
Then there is the Leviathan. Listen to the Biblical definition “I will not keep silence concerning his limbs, or his mighty strength, or his orderly frame. Who can strip off his outer armor? Who can come within his double mail? Who can open the doors of his face? Around his teeth there is terror. His strong scales are his pride, shut up as with a tight seal. One is so near to another that no air can come between them. They are joined one to another; they clasp each other and cannot be separated. His sneezes flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning torches; sparks of fire leap forth. Out of his nostrils smoke goes forth as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes forth from his mouth. In his neck lodges strength, and dismay leaps before him. The folds of his flesh are joined together, firm on him and immovable. His heart is as hard as a stone, even as hard as a lower millstone. When he raises himself up, the mighty fear; because of the crashing they are bewildered. The sword that reaches him cannot avail, nor the spear, the dart or the javelin. He regards iron as straw, bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make him flee; sling-stones are turned into stubble for him. Clubs are regarded as stubble; he laughs at the rattling of the javelin. His underparts are like sharp potsherds; He spreads out like a threshing sledge on the mire. He makes the depths boil like a pot; He makes the sea like a jar of ointment. Behind him he makes a wake to shine; one would think the deep to be gray-haired. Nothing on earth is like him, one made without fear. He looks on everything that is high; He is king over all the sons of pride.” Is this an alligator as some would have us believe? If so then there is no such thing as alligator boots. Something for Christians to ponder.
Like that distinction matters to a person who believes you’re going to Hell forever for your apostasy. :)
Ok- I’m not a historian, I’m a scientist. I don’t actually doubt that Jesus lived, I do doubt the supernatural claims in the bible. Further, I’d be interested in the archeological evidence you mentioned (as that is scientific).
Thanks.
“… when you consider the fact that the prophesies of the bible have come true thus far without one error you have an extraordinary book whose author is none other than God.”
I have two problems with that. 1. It is not a fact that every single prophecy in the bible has come true without any error. Different factions within Christianity argue as to whether or not certain passages are even prophecies in the first place, or if they are, to their meaning. For example, pre-millennial dispensationalists argue that certain passages, usually taken out of context, mean an imminent rapture of the church to meet Jesus in the clouds, whilst unbelievers have to endure seven years of increasing torture on earth. Loving God, anyone? However, most mainstream churches tend to take the view that this is bunkum.
It’s also thought that some passages were chronicles of historical or (then) present events and not prophecies of future ones at all.
Given the differences in interpretation between the various parts of the Body of Christ, how can we possibly know that each and every prophecy has come true?
2. You have a non sequitur there. If we accept for a moment that every prophecy has come true, that does not prove God was its author. That’s like saying “Mike steals things and Mike eats eggs therefore I’m giving up eggs because they make people steal.”
In a time without internet, tv, newspapers, libraries or archives that is a *long* time. Psychological experiments have proven that even hours after an accident or event witnesses miss out crucial details or give contradictory reports.
The other sources you mention, they’re just repeating what they have learned from other sources. Not really first-hand evidence…
Epic FAIL.
1) Josephus wasn’t born until after Jesus died, and didn’t mention him until 60 years after that. And he only said people believed in some guy named Jesus. Duh.
2) Isaiah? Really? How is an old testament prophet evidence for the historicity of Jesus?
3) Tacitus? Even by your own admission it is at least 60 years after Jesus died.
4) Pliny the Younger is evidence — but that Christians were being persecuted, not that Jesus actually existed.
When you find something within Jesus lifetime, let us know. Until then, you’re just providing us with here-say based on here-say based on here-say.
I do believe Jesus existed, but it’s a belief — I don’t think there is any good evidence for it. I choose to believe it because early Christianity makes more sense to me if it were based on a real rabbi. But if he didn’t exist, then it isn’t a big deal to me. I can certainly see how it could have happened without an original figure, especially with Paul involved.
So, and please understand that I am trying to understand your logic, what you are saying is that Christians are speaking out of ignorance?
Evolutionary Science declares that Christians are idiots; “I watched a montage of scientists state as much. One gentleman even referred to Christians as evil. What could be more evil than someone who goes about propogating what he knows to be false.
And so you are exactly right in stating that we must come right out and state the facts rather than hiding behind word games which only kill time.
Tomorrow I will deal with your Noah’s Ark statement.
Again, I’ll supply that info tommorrow.
It’s tomorrow now. Did you provide the evidence?
Ok- I scrolled up and see that you suggested a few books, but I’m not concerned about Jesus as a living person. I think that he probably lived– for me that is not in dispute. If the archaeological evidence you are presenting me with is in support that Jesus lived, then I’m already on board. I’d like archaeological evidence of say…. a worldwide flood. I don’t doubt that Jesus lived, I doubt the supernatural claims about his life.
(I put this in another place as well.)
Sorry for the delay. I was trying to decide whether to write a long post here but that would just take up too much room on Mr. Florien’s page. My posts are long enough. So let me give you a source that will give you the information I promised. Its called “The Bible as History, by Werner Keller. This is an archeological book which takes you to the places mentioned in the Bible and demonstrates the accuracy of the Bible as a historical document by said evidence.
Someone on this page said that the Bible was a fairy tale book with no facts behind it. Mr Keller’s book will take care of that notion with hard evidence. And you see, this is part of the battle. If the Bible can be demonstrated to you to be an accurate historical document, and Jesus an actual historical figure as the evidence has already shown, then we can move on the ’supernatural stuff’ that is the final pillar.
And just as an aside, I am spending some time in a book that you all might know. It’s titled “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory” by Stephen J. Gould. So, wintermute, I am checking out the evidence you suggested.
Keller deals with the Flood and there is another old book that I found years ago titled “The Flood: in light of the Bible, Geology and Archeology” by Alfred M. Rehwinkel.
If Keller claims that there’s any evidence that there was ever a global flood, or even that such a flood is not utterly contradicted by the evidence, it’s going to be very hard for us to take anything else he says on the subject of Biblical history seriously.
Even back in the 50′s (when this book was written), it was well established, even amongst the majority of Christian theologians that belief in a literal flood was unsupportable. Still, I’m sure whatever you bring will be most amusing.
Also, “science” (if it is indeed that seeing as how it is published in a book and not in the scientific literature) that is from the 1950′s isn’t really relevant today unless it has been cited repeatedly by other scientists. Here is a good portal to access scientific literature on things biological and ecological:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
If you’ll type in “intelligent design” you see a myriad of papers discussing why it isn’t science. (Gould is ok, but I’d rather you read the primary sources.)
Also, for those geologically minded people out there, is there a good database for geological research to which we can point Voice?
I apologize for the placement of these posts but I have to keep going back to this one as it is the only one with a reply to make sure you get it. I have two questions/statements.
1. What are the primary sources that you deem best to present the case for evolution?
2. Why would the age of a book be a problem as we have already discussed the age of Plato’s etc…works?
3. I will check out the link you provided below but as I understand it the intelligent designers don’t mention God per se, just an intelligence. Is this just to get their foot in the door so to speak?
Voice, I appreciate your inquiry!
The primary sources are any of the research publications in the scientific literature (books and text books are secondary sources– so for a debate on evolution, it is good to read up on some research on evolution– it gives you an idea of how enormously complicated it is). Plus, you have the added bonus of reading editorials or reviews (compilations of research) directly from scientists themselves at pubmed. (I believe Gould is a philosopher of science).
And science doesn’t work like philosophy. If I want to cite a publication in a scientific paper, it needs to be recent (in the last five years) to be relevant. This is because science moves really fast! If I’m citing research from the 50′s then it’s a good bet that other scientists have read about this already (if is is established, that is). If no one has touched the research since the 50′s then it’s a good bet that it’s bad research and can’t be replicated/verified.
Hope that is helpful!
Sorry- I forgot to reply to point #3.
An intelligent designer would have to be supernatural (meaning beyond nature, outside of nature, metaphysical- which literally means beyond the physical world). Since science’s domain is the natural world, it is beyond the scope of science to make any comments on this matter. Whereas creation “scientists” are claiming to do actual science. In this way, it is pseudo-science:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
The actual rocks.
Failing that, scientific papers written by people who have studied the actual rocks. (example)
Failing that, there are some excellent tertiary sources. Bones, Rocks and Stars by Chris Tunney is very short and light on detail, but is a decent primer. The Age of Everything by Matthew Hedman is a heavier read, but is more through. Reading the Rocks by Marcia Bjornerud is excellent, though it’s a little light on exactly how we know that our dating methods are accurate.
In the end, though, if you rely on tertiary sources, written for the layman, there are always going to be lacunae, where the author doesn’t care to spend several chapters explaining exactly how accurate radiometric dating is, or how we know it’s that accurate. If you want to fill in the blanks to the nth degree, you’re going to need to hit your local library or university and start reading the primary literature.
It’s significant that a science book is 50 years old, because science has moved on in those 50 years. Yes, it might (but in this case, probably isn’t) be a good overview of how science stood 50 years ago, but it’s highly unlikely to have more than a rudimentary relationship to modern science.
If that 50-year-old “science” book is written by a journalist with no training in or deep understanding of the science in question (such as Werner Keller), it’s highly unlikely to be of much use at all in.
“Intelligent Design” is a formulation of the Discovery Institute. They often pretend that they don’t know who the designer is, but it never takes long before they start making statements like “Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory” or “Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools”, or publishing their infamous Wedge Document.
It’s hardly very honest of them to pretend that they don’t have a specific religious agenda, is it?
There’s a difference between ignorance and stupidity. I think there are tons of smart christians who simply don’t know (ie are ignorant) the evidence. It’s not meant to insult, it’s meant to point to the fact that non-scientists shouldn’t really be criticizing science (unless they are philosophers of science– and these folks usually start off in science somewhere). This lady has an education in science, but she doesn’t practice science. I’d like to know if she has any peer reviewed publications in the scientific literature specifically on evolution. That would make her a legitimate critic of it.
Like LRA, I totally oppose the notion that Christians – any believers in gods, for that matter – are stupid.
What I will argue is that believers are selective as to where they apply reason and critical thinking. They use rationale to govern hundreds of everyday decisions (filling the car with gas instead of carrot juice, or putting on a coat instead of a speedo when it is -30 outside), but they abandon it for their belief in gods.
That’s not stupidity; it’s just illogical.
Not to be insulting, but ignorance is pretty dead on.
When my son was 5 years old, and my mother was telling him the Adam and Eve story, he sat and listened patiently.
Then he said, “So people today act bad because a talking snake made a lady eat a bad apple? Grandma, that’s just stupid.”
Yes, that is a direct quote.
If a 5 year old can see through one of the first in many insane stories, then I’d like to think that educated adults can too.
(On a funnier note, at age 6, much to the anger of my religious parents, he started calling Easter “Zombie Jesus with the Bunny Army Day”. Yeah… my kid’s pretty amusing)
Oh, John Boy…tsk, tsk, tsk.
“Dishonest John”:
Your dishonesty is getting old too. Your refusal to say anything directly is getting old.
You haven’t said whether your saying, “I am familiar with Lewis” was an attempt to pretend that you had read an actual book of his, not just quotes on a book cover or tea box.
(I’m familiar James Michener’s “Hawaii”, but I haven’t read it, and don’t use “familiar with” to pretend that I have)
You may have read him, but it sounds more like you are being dishonest about it. Why? Because you never post anything direct to support anything you say.
I’ve never used the term “woo” before, but it does apply pretty well to your unread, unlettered, unsupported, randomly spouted, village-idiot-style touchy-feely sweet nothings.
If you are speaking of those who hold to the Theistic Evolutionary Theory then I understand wyat you are talking about. But these men are compromisers, trying to make peace with the Scientific community at the expense of their consciences…if they are indeed Christians.
Theistic Evolution states that God created the first cells and then backed off to watch and see what happened. And these cells evolved into all the “tens of millions of different species.”
Now are you telling me that you believe God was in the mix somewhere. Because that really flies in the face of Darwinian Evolution doesn’t it!
Ha! Maybe strangle with words. I don’t believe in violence! ;)
It’s a metaphor then? I have no problem treating the bible as literature. I just don’t believe it to be the *exclusive* source of *Truth* from *God*.
I believe it to be, like other mythos documents, meant to provide social cohesion and also to contain “mysteries” for people to puzzle over. It’s great literature, and so are the Homeric epics!
Yes, fine! Even when I was a xian, in our church we were encouraged to take some of the bible stories figuratively. Trouble is, some churches insist that every word inside its covers is the literal truth, still as relevant today as it ever was, which is why it’s considered OK to be as thoroughly vile as they are towards, say, gay people.
Technically, it’s your Knowledge (Nature) skill that tells you it’s raining and Survival that keeps you dry, but you got the ability modifiers right.
That was awesome! haaahaahahahahahaaa!
And there’s me thinking purple candles were for erotic spells…
This woman makes me want to bang my head against walls.
Yes! Me too. I rarely feel that way about atheists per se, or indeed about anyone with whom I disagree. But this woman has a peculiar knack for taking ignorance to uncharted levels. She’s not a scientist; she’s a brainwashed idiot.
The xian answer I was given to this question (by our church pastor) was: God is merciful* so he’ll either give every single person at least one opportunity to hear the gospel and make their choice, or if some get missed, he’ll let them be saved anyway. (There were bible quotations to back this up, but I can’t remember what they were and tbh I’m not that bothered.)
OK, I thought, if some of them (e.g. in remote parts of the world) get saved anyway despite never hearing the gospel, why are we sending missionaries out?
*not in his autobiography, he isn’t.
So if two people believe that faith is a mystery, how do they hold a conversation about it?
Person #1: Well, it’s a mystery……
Person #2: Yep, Yep, a mystery for sure…..
Or they could become theologists.
What is faith? A state of mind? A state of higher consciousness?
Faith and truth don’t seem to mesh very well…faith is the act that opens your mind despite the evidence, and truth is the act that acknowledges the lack of a need for faith. Aren’t faith and “Truth” mutually exclusive?
Now, I would suggest that faith and trust are more closely alligned than faith and truth. That is what I would prefer to say if I were a theist.
… you forgot to add — “in general” at the end of your sentence.
:-)
” God is merciful* so he’ll either give every single person at least one opportunity to hear the gospel and make their choice …”
Yet if you’re born into a denominate Christian culture you have a distinct advantage and if you are not you’re at a distinct disadvantage. So I presume that god doesn’t do the “equality” thing. At this point the normal type answer is we cannot hope to understand the mind of god etc. etc. leaving you no option but to point out that they already claimed they could be the fact that they have attribute an attribute of merciful to their god.
Another Epic FAIL from The Voice … what news do you have next Daniel — have you spotted the Pope wearing some rather humorous head gear perhaps?
I believe Jesus lived too, and even did great things for humanity – and Christianity totally usurps, bastardizes, negates, distorts, perverts, and ruins whatever he might have done.
Excellent rebuttal, Daniel.
My mother is a big,m “But what about the PROPHECIES!!!!!” person.
I had to explain to her that Jesus amazing prophecy about Rome sacking Jerusalem wasn’t actually written down anywhere until decades after the event actually happened, and that Daniel’s prophecy regarding Cyrus and Babylon was first written down centuries after those events took place.
Pretty easy to do accurate prophesying when you don’t make any predictions until AFTER the events happen.
I will demonstrate:
“A former evangelical named Daniel Florian will one day turn his back on his faith and start a blog dedicated to rebutting unreasonable faith.”
Was I right?
That, quite literally, broke my heart.
:(
Creationism is so awful. Keep it in the church, don’t poison our future with that idiocy.
I think I need to be sick now.
Interesting to see that bananas are still considered good evidence of creation. A banana does not resemble a dog, therefore evolution is false.
What is it with creationists and their strange fascination of bananas?
Yes; and who are we to impose the xian gospel on “savages” when they’re probably perfectly happy with their own god, or none, anyway?
Isn’t there some kind of proof by anthropology, something like 1) The human psyche everywhere has a tendency to home in on a ‘thing’ which is greater; 2) In any language, that ‘thing’ is called god; 3) Therefore god exists.
Ac 14:17 says that it is “not that God left men without evidence of Himself, For He has shown kindnesses to you; He has sent you rain from heaven and fruitful season, giving you food and happiness to your hearts’ content.”
And Romans 1:19-20 says “because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse…
I can hear you Mr. Florien, but Jesus was able to open deaf ears and blind eyes.
I certainly do!
I think the more intelligent people eventually realize this, and the less intelligent ones continue to blind themselves to it. They use emotion (the primitive survival brain) over thought and evaluation.
Thus, Christianity is a sorting process, of natural selection, selecting for less intelligent, thoughtful, inquiring, evaluating, learning, rational. perceptive – and honest – people.
Incredible. It’s incredible how this young woman in the video says that when she reads the actual text in the bible, that she is “not interpreting” said text, but that she is simply reading it word-for-word, as biblegod intended it.
If that is the case, then when discussing the “Word of God” with Shermer, or anyone else, she would literally have to be able to quote the bible, verbatim, otherwise, she is most definitely giving her interpretation of the text. And of course, we know she cannot quote the bible, verbatim.
So, the only two honest approaches she can take on the topic of “God’s Word”, is a) read to people directly from the bible, or b) shut-the-f%ck up.
I’m sure I’m not alone when I vote “b”.
I used to think there was a difference between ignorance and stupidity.
In the last century, when agrarian people couldn’t get educations, highly intelligent people might have been unable to read well, for instance.
But continued willful ignorance is stupidity.
What do you do when you find out that you didn’t know something? Defend what you believed before? Deny? Change your belief about what you thought you knew, and use that information? Attempt to learn more, or attack?
And how open are you to learning something in the first place? Seeking knowledge, open to change, or stubbornly resisting?
What you do with it makes all the difference:
Continued willful ignorance is stupidity in action.
Thus, Christianity is a sorting process, of natural selection, selecting for less intelligent, thoughtful, inquiring, evaluating, learning, rational. perceptive – and honest – people.
Evolution, in other words. Maybe a certain portion of the population will die out, killed by their own stupidity, unaware it’s even happening.
Ironic.
…as does the term woo-woo – see http://skepdic.com/woowoo.html
John has a PhD in woo-woo.
Ah, yes, quoting a book written by various people, which you’ve chosen to blindly believe: unverified, unverified as remotely factual, violent, self-contradicting, to a few of the billions of people who don’t believe it….
THAT’ll be a powerful, eloquent message to turn the tide of human thought with its incontrovertible fact and rational logic.
*snort*
Were dinosaurs on the Ark? If not this would explain their mass extinction.
A-ha-ha-ha-ha! Elliptical argument.
There were no dinosaurs on the ark because a) they were already extinct by the (alleged) time of the flood, and b) there was no ark, or none which has been proved; it’s a fairy story.
The behemoth could be anything. It doesn’t have to be either a dinosaur or a hippo. It could be a woolly mammoth, or any large creature at all really, extinct or otherwise. There are no photos of the dodo even. How would we know what the behemoth looked like, if it existed?
Leviathon?
Out of his nostrils smoke goes forth as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes forth from his mouth.
Clearly a mythological beast – no literal interpretation to be had here. In which case, why bother taking the behemoth seriously either?
The whole thing is poppycock.
Voice:
you don’t explain how all these animals were distributed across the world into vastly different habitats and ecosystems once the ark landed. I read somewhere that christians say volcanoes blasted the animals around the world.
Many animals are very fragile, especially insects, and require specific temperatures to survive. For example two penguins could not be dropped off at the top of a mountain and hope to live very long. Two rattlesnakes would need to eat the two rats from the boat to survive more than a week and then what would they eat? See my point? Think about this childish little story. Dwell on it a little. It is simply not possible.
They were jammed in as tight as they are in railway cars? That’s fine for a day or two, but if they have to stay like that for a year or more, they’re not going to be able to walk when they get off.
Of course, it depends on what you count as an “animal”. Do bacteria count? What about fish? Lobsters? Mosquitoes?
What about plants? How many species of tree do you think can survive being buried under several hundred tonnes of water for a year?
Besides, you’re really talking about 180,000 square feet, as those 20-foot-high ceilings are going to be mostly wasted space, unless you think Noah stacked lighter animals on top of the heavier ones. I’m having difficulty tracking down a standard size for a freight car used for transporting livestock, but 50′ x 10′ seems to be reasonable. Which gives us 360 freight cars rather than your claimed 1000.
Yeah, this isn’t how genetics works.
So why aren’t there any “post-flood” dinosaur remains? Why did they all bury themselves below that pesky iridium layer (that I’m sure flood geologists have perfectly good explanation for)? What about dinosaur species that obviously can’t be Leviathan or Behemoth, such as Microraptor or Saltopus? Were they on the ark?
“Now understand that from the Biblical description it was 300 cubits long, fifty wide and thirty tall. In feet that would come out to about 600 feet long, 100 wide, and 60 tall. With the three decks we would come out to a capacity of 3.6 million cubic feet of space.”
The bible also describes the size of heaven. Apparently it’s a giant cube and bigger than new york city. lol sorry I’m just having a blast with this comment. I have a hard time believing it’s for real :O
So, Noah and his family were cleaning up feces on this giganto barge? When did they have time to feed the beasts or create and maintain the many extremely precise habitats needed by various limited environment animals like the panda, polar bear or stickle back fish? What did they feed the carnivores? How did they store precise and/or delicate food supplies. How did they even know what to feed to whom? How could they distribute such food supplies in a timely manner? Where did they put the millions of insect species? How did they acquire such? How did they maintain habitat for virii or microbes? Where did the water go that was supposed to have covered all the earth? Why didn’t Noah and family drown from the water vapor present in such a model? It’s estimated that we haven’t yet cataloged 90% of planetary species yet Noah was supposed to have gathered them all into an ark and feed them all for 40 days. And I haven’t yet mentioned the problems related to plant species. On and on, on and on, on and on….
Why, it’s a miracle or a metaphor or just a story told around camp fires.
So Noah managed to build a 600 feet long ark, at least 5000 years ago, before the invention of metal nails and iron bands. And this ark managed to hold together for something like 40 days in what must have been the roughest seas ever seen before or after, with the skies dispersing literally miles of rain.
The largest wooden ships ever built (about 150 years ago) were less than 500 feet long, and these were not used for opens seas, for the simple reason that they would cave in in rough sea, despite being reinforced with metal supports.
When they weren’t tending to the animals Noah and his family must have been really busy manning the pumps to keep that thing from flooding. The ark is an engineering nightmare that in itself requires divine intervention to stay afloat.
Also, I wonder where Noah got all the pitch from, pitch being a petroleum product created by dead organic material under pressure in a geological event that supposedly hadn’t happened yet.
This little boat, I GUARANTEE could not hold the world’s biomass. Period. There is NO way that 1000 railroad cars could hold 2 of every species in addition to 7 of the domesticated species. There are MILLIONS of species on this planet.
You do realize that Noah would have to collect EVERY lichen, marsupial, bacteria, mammal, arctic creature, amazonian reptile… yeah right. One man collected EVERY creature on the dry lands? Are you SERIOUS?
Add to that this fact: fresh water creatures can’t live in salt water and salt water creatures can’t live in fresh water… so what kind of water fell from the sky? If it was fresh water, then Noah would have had to collect all the sea creatures (not to mention store them) on his primitive little boat. Do you really think that Noah could have collected deep sea creatures? NO.
If salt water fell from the sky, then Noah would have had to collect (and store) all fresh water creatures from the thousands and thousands of lakes, rivers, and streams all over the world. Do you really think that he could have done this? NO!
Scientists are still discovering new species ALL the time EVERY day! What on earth makes you think that one man (even if he lived to be 800 years old) could not only discover, but save all these species?
Sorry, but it’s not POSSIBLE!!!
If god exists:
“Damnit boy, I thought I told you to write that stuff down for them!”
That is exactly why Christians are being nonsensical when they ask why atheists are protesting against “nothing”.
Forcing other people to conform to their beliefs by law and actions and hate-filled invective and irrational programming of children is a very hostile “nothing”.
The earliest copy of Plato’s work “Tetralogies” is one from A.D. 900, over 1200 years after his death. How can we be sure it is accurate?
Aristotle died in 322 B.C. and the earliest copy of his work that we have is from 1100 A.D. Thats a 1400 year span between the original and the earliest copy we have.
In contrast, the New Testament was written between A.D. 50 and A.D. 95 with the earliest copy of the gospels and the letters of Paul, Peter, Jude and John produced in 125 A.D. that’s only a thirty year span rather than the over a thousand year span for the ‘published’ works of Plato and Aristotle.
Furthermore, there are only 7 copies of Plato’s work and 49 of Aristotles. Compare this to the over 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament alone and that rises to over 40,000 when you include the manuscript copies of the Old Testament.
From the Jewish Historian Josephus we have this statement; “We have given practical proof of our reverence for our own scriptures. For although such long ages have now passed, no one has ventured to either add or to remove or to alter a syllable: and it is an instinct with every Jew, from the day of his birth, to regard them as the decrees of God, to abide by them and if need be cheerfully to die for them. Time and again now the sight has been witnessed of prisoners enduring tortures and death in every fomr in the theaters rather than utter a single word against the laws and allied documents.”
And he is referring to the Old Testament.
The statement has been made that Josephus wasn’t born until after Jesus died and wrote some 60 years after the event. Ok, people are still writing histories concerning Abraham Lincoln and he was murdered 144 years ago. Does that mean these historians are wrong as they are writing 144 years after the fact.
Josephus wrote 60 years after the fact. Tacitus and Pliny wrote 100 years after the fact and these men would be considered hostile witnesses (a Jewish Priest/historian, a Roman Senator and a Roman Governor.)
The gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel was written in 55 A.D. and the letters of Paul began in 50 A.D. You may discount away but your discounting flies in the face of evidence!
The difference is– disagreeing with Plato on universals doesn’t condemn me to hell…
In fact, at the end of his life, Plato turned toward empiricism in his final work “The Laws”:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/laws.html
lol your kid rocks
Tell him im tottaly stealing
“Zombie Jesus with the Bunny Army Day”
As slurms put it, your kid rocks. Seriously! I wish I had had his good sense when I was his age–hell, I wish I’d had it when I was ten, eighteen, and twenty three.
They seem to think it’s god’s will to breed like rabbits though.
At 6.7 billion people and extinction and loss of habitat, (and urban sprawl, congestion, growth, water pollution, air pollution, traffic congestion, food shortage, high cost of housing and medical care, poverty, shortage of resources, crime and crowding, competition, sewage overload, lack of available drinking water, industrial waste, paving over green land, and environmental harm), I think we’ve been too fruitful and multiplied too much.
I would never insinuate that you were an idiot and I apologize if there was something in my comment that said as much.
The big difference here is that both Jones and Koresh claimed that they were Jesus, both were worshiped by their followers.
To corroborate your statement, there was a t.v. program not to long ago in which the followers of Jones and Koresh were interviewed and many still believed in their respective ‘messiahs.’
But Jesus said that when He returns it won’t be a secret and there will be no need to tell people that He’s here for everyone will see Him.
boomslang: she actually does interpret the bible right there on the video when asked:
“a day is like a thousand years”
her response:
“well that verse has nothing to do with genisis. that verse is talking about god being very patient with us so to speak…so that is what that verse is really referring to.”
How is that not interpreting the bible??? lol
This PHD scientist also has the following profound statement to say in the video:
“he just said and boom you have all of the different creatures…it’s not one becoming the other.”
he just said AND BOOM
there ya have it folks. Magic!
Noah had to make a quick stop in Australia to drop off 90% of the world’s marsupials before he headed on to Ararat.
yeah…i was just pondering how many traps they would have needed to capture the wide variety of insects that would be required to feed many of the animals, not to mention the strict temperature controls and feeding schedules they would need for the insects just to keep them alive.
Insects (Class Insecta) are the biggest class of arthropods and the only ones with wings. They are the most diverse group of animals on the planet. They are most diverse at the equator and their diversity declines toward the poles. With over a million described species—more than half of all known living organisms[2][3]—with estimates of undescribed species as high as 30 million, thus potentially representing over 90% of the differing life forms on the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect
Oh, it is.
Voice also believes that all Neanderthal specimens are one individual, who was really a modern human with arthritis. Among other stupid things.
http://voicefromthewilderness.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/the-hoaxes-of-evolution-or-the-non-missing-links/
Metaphor Man! — Can leap tall stories with a single bound!
Question-I-thority:
you bring up the most obvious question of this story. What happened to all the fresh water fish/animals? Did Noah have massive fresh water fish tanks aboard this vessel? Did he have hundreds of zoologists aboard that had many years of experience in feeding delicate animals? Just to feed the animals he would have required many, many more than two of each. The insect problem alone is unfathomable. He would have needed literally millions of the same sized ships just to house the food required for 40 days. Since animals EAT other animals he would have required many more than two of each just to feed them. I’m not kidding when I say millions. Take a look at what an elephant needs to eat in a single day just to survive:
Elephants are herbivores, spending 16 hours a day collecting plant food. Their diet is at least 50% grasses, supplemented with leaves, bamboo, twigs, bark, roots, and small amounts of fruits, seeds and flowers. Because elephants only digest 40% of what they eat, they have to make up for their digestive system’s lack of efficiency in volume. An adult elephant can consume 140–270 kg (300–600 lb) of food a day. 60% of that food leaves the elephant’s body undigested.
300-600 lb PER DAY. For two elephants that is 40,000 lb of food required for 40 days. So 20 tons of food needed just for two of the millions of species on the boat. Why am I bothering to talk about this… what a great way to waste a boring afternoon. It was fun but I’m done lol.
Yesterday a friend and I were discussing bible stories (I have no idea why), and he asked the cunning question, “How many animals did Moses take up onto the ark?”
At this point, one is supposed to say a number, or say “two of every species”, before being informed that, haha, Moses didn’t go on the ark, it was Noah, let hilarity commence.
All of which was academic, because I misheard my friend; I thought he said, “How many animals did Moses take up the ar%e”
“pitch being a petroleum product created by dead organic material under pressure in a geological event that supposedly hadn’t happened yet.”
Ha!
:)
Wait.. have I committed a violence here? I hope not! :(
Whenever you find something that doesn’t make sense, it was evil wizards that did it.
And BOOM goes the dynamite.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W45DRy7M1no
Ha!
As I said (somewhere on this post)… had I sat down with her (as a scientist myself) I would have TOTALLY put the screws to her (the woman in the video) to a point of making her shut that ridiculous pie hole of hers…
Or as the case was in my childhood – demons. :)
They fit comfortably in …
a) the hand
b) the mouth
c) the anus
d) all of the above
If you answered d, congratulations! You’re a creationist!
What is it with creationists and their strange fascination of bananas?
It resembles a phallus. It’s painfully obvious; the more they try to repress it…
You’d require a Knowledge (Nature) check for someone to know it was raining? Really?
In the only circumstances I can think of where any kind of roll would be needed, it would probably be Listen. Which is Wis-based.
Well, he’s trying, bless his heart. The best he’s come up with so far is “Neanderthals were all one person with arthritis” and “Tacitus mentioned that 2nd Century Christians totally believed in Jesus”.
http://voicefromthewilderness.wordpress.com/
I won’t doubt your own personal experiences, of course, but the fact that a priest said something does not make it Catholic dogma. The Catholic Church is quite clear on this subject; the Pope is merely human and not a god, and anyone who claims they teach otherwise is simply false.
The Bible says nothing as to the nature of the star; simply that it hung in the east, and let the Wise Men to Bethlehem. It does not say that there could be no rational explanation for it, or if it does, I’ve never seen where.
Even if we assume that the presence of the star was a miracle, directly engineered by God, does that mean that it cannot have been something that could be explained otherwise? Indeed, it seems to me that it would be useful to have an explanation for why Herod did not notice the star, let alone understand its significance.
That specific example is probably not true, but there are similar examples which are true. Most notable a snail dated at 27,000 years old, and a seal 13,000 years old. (Both freshly killed)
There are two specific grounds on which I suspect you’ve misremembered the example: 1) carbon dating gives you the amount of time since an organism stopped metabolising carbon from the atmosphere, and it therefore serves no purpose to try to carbon date living samples; and 2) Carbon dating, even at its most precise, can only measure dates of up to 100,00 years (and few labs have the precision to get beyond 60,000 years). Beyond that, all you’ll know is that it’s too old to be measured with this technique, and other radiosequences (with longer half-lives) need to be used.
However, your basic point (as I mentioned above) is valid. Under certain (well-known, easily controlled for) circumstances, carbon dating can provide erroneously high dates. Specifically, if an organism did not get its carbon directly from the atmosphere, it will appear older than it really is. In the case of terrestrial herbivores (who get their carbon from plants who got it from the atmosphere) or carnivores (who get their carbon from herbivores, who get it from plants, who get it from the atmosphere) this inaccuracy is generally below the precision of carbon dating and can be comfortably ignored.
But, in pelagic (deep marine) environments, the primary source of carbon is foraminifers; the tiny shells of certain planktons. These sit at the bottom of the ocean for thousands of years, possibly being recycled into new foraminifer shells several times. Eventually, when the carbon in them is incorporated into the bodies of other animals, it has already been out of the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years, and so gives an excessively high carbon age.
This is a known limitation of carbon dating, and does not invalidate other ages where this technique has been applied properly.
As to how we know that carbon dating is (normally) accurate, this is established in about the most tedious way you can imagine: Take a system that can be shown to lay down annual layers (lake varves and tree rings are excellent for this), count down several thousand layers, extract some organic material, and carbon date it. We can do this repeatedly with different samples from different areas that were preserved in different ways, and we can construct calibration curves to reflect the differing historical levels of atmospheric C14.
For that matter, what about all the oceanic species that don’t live either at the surface of open water, or in the pelagic depths? Lobsters would have been crushed to death under all the extra water, and any fish that depend on surface run-off for their food would have starved.
Plus, of course, anything that fed on underwater plants, which can no longer get sunlight…
Oh, and the 40 days is just the time the rain was falling. They were stuck on the ark for a full year.
Perhaps one of the True Believers can explain how Noah maintained pond scum or inter-tidal environments?
Tick tock, tick tock….
I believe that the standard explanation is that there was only one ecological niche before the flood; no deserts or mountains or rainforests, or even underground, presumably, but just an endless savannah from pole to pole. Hence all the animals could easily live together on an ark for a year.
noah would have needed 365,000 lbs of feed just for 2 elephants for 1 year. Not to mention say 1 million gallons of fresh water. Oh and horses require movement just to keep their blood circulating. He would have needed some type of horse track to walk them around every so often.
Sorry for the delay. I was trying to decide whether to write a long post here but that would just take up too much room on Mr. Florien’s page. My posts are long enough. So let me give you a source that will give you the information I promised. Its called “The Bible as History, by Werner Keller. This is an archeological book which takes you to the places mentioned in the Bible and demonstrates the accuracy of the Bible as a historical document by said evidence.
Someone on this page said that the Bible was a fairy tale book with no facts behind it. Mr Keller’s book will take care of that notion with hard evidence. And you see, this is part of the battle. If the Bible can be demonstrated to you to be an accurate historical document, and Jesus an actual historical figure as the evidence has already shown, then we can move on the ‘supernatural stuff’ that is the final pillar.
And just as an aside, I am spending some time in a book that you all might know. It’s titled “The Structure of Evolutionary Theory” by Stephen J. Gould. So, wintermute, I am checking out the evidence you suggested.
Voice, I commend you for reading Gould’s work. That’s a pretty heavy introduction — I recommend Zimmer’s Evolution personally — but if you can get through it, then I think that’s great.
Actually I do KNOW Jesus. I have been talking to Him today and He has spoken to me through His written Word, the Bible. Faith is not blind but based on facts, on evidence.
Hey Wintermute; you stated:
“Even back in the 50’s (when this book was written), it was well established, even amongst the majority of Christian theologians that belief in a literal flood was unsupportable. Still, I’m sure whatever you bring will be most amusing.”
It isn’t surprising to me that “christain theologians” would have problems with biblical things. In the Garden of Eden the devil asked the question “Did God really say…” And people have been doing the same thing ever since.
You see, denying the existence of God or the authority of God is nothing new. And the crux of the matter is this; to disbelieve that there was a worldwide flood is to disbelieve in God.
If God is the God of the Bible then God is a all powerful God who is able to do exactly as He wants with His creation. He has the power to create the world with the mere spoken word, and the authority as Creator to enact laws to be obeyed, and He has the power to destroy the world in judgment for disobedience to said laws while saving Noah and his family along with the animals that He Himself sent to the ark and can preserve what He wants to preserve.
If you approach God from this standpoint then you have no problem with all the rest. If you say, “God does not exist” or God does exist but is limited” wel then you see how these ‘christian theologians’ came to their point of view.
Really? You think the Pope is denying God?
Of course, if you think that God worked a thousand miracles in order to cover up all evidence that the flood ever happened, then doesn’t that lead to its own theological problems? Why could God condemn people for believing the evidence that he planted?
But your original point was that you has solid evidence for the existence of God, not an excuse for why that evidence doesn’t exist. Do you believe that the flood fits into that “solid evidence” category, and if so, can you actually poin out some of this evidence? If there is evidence for the flood, and scientists only deny it because they want to actively deny God, why do so many Christians look at the rocks and say that it’s obvious that the flood never happened? Are they just sleepers, pretending to be Christians so I can make points like this?
Wintermute, why on earth are you even bothering? Absolutely nothing you say will make any difference to him. You can’t break through denial this profound.
And the crux of the matter is this; to disbelieve that there was a worldwide flood is to disbelieve in God.
Dude, the Bible is your idol. Seriously, get some Christian counseling. Somewhere outside of the bible worshipping church you are attending.
Jeff:
Yes, I know. I guess I’m just a sucker for a lost cause.
You said
“If Keller claims that there’s any evidence that there was ever a global flood, or even that such a flood is not utterly contradicted by the evidence, it’s going to be very hard for us to take anything else he says on the subject of Biblical history seriously.”
Keller also makes a case that there was an alignment of the stars when Jesus was born and that was the ‘star’ that the wise men followed. But this doesn’t explain how the star led the wise men to the place where Jesus was and stood over the house. How could an alignment of stars move and then stand over a house and move no more?
He makes a case for the shroud of turin as well but this too is wrong for the Bible states that Jesus was wrapped in strips of cloth soaked in Myrrh and Aloes. This would harden into a cocoon shape. Also the body was wrapped up to the neck and a separate face cloth was placed over the head. The bible states that this cloth was folded by itself.
And so I disagree with him when he disagrees with the biblical account.
As to your statement about the pope; yes I believe He is denying God. Why? Because the Catholic Church declares that the Pope is God on earth. Sorry but he’s just a dude.
So I return to my original point; The bible must be established as an accurate historical document and then we can proceed.
I don’t think you are a sucker. I don’t think any of you are suckers. I have never heard such scientific intelligence anywhere. You all have made me ask questions of the Christians I know, questions that have never been asked by Christians to Christians ever before. And let me tell you, the first response I get to your questions from most Christians are the stupid pat answers we’ve all heard before.
But when I press them, they begin to scratch their heads and their ignorance is revealed. They realize that the ‘answers’ we have been giving for so many years just don’t work, especially when the questioner is bringing more to the table than the usual drivel.
Mr. Florien stated that nowhere in the Bible can you find even a suggestion that we must ask Jesus into our hearts. But what do you hear in Churches across the land, “Ask Jesus into your hearts.”
The message of the Gospel must be the message of Jesus and of His apostles. It must be the message of the Bible rather than the nonsensical drivel that is being spewed forth today. This is something you all have made me do. I have been doing a lot of re-evaluating lately.
And I am reading the stuff you all have directed me to.
Finally, Jeff,
I had no idea that my denial was profound!
Over timescales relevant to human lifetimes, the stars are effectively fixed points. Indeed, it took until long after Jesus was born before anyone realised that they actually move. Therefore, the “star” that is supposed to have been followed was certainly not “an alignment of the stars”. I’ve heard some plausible theories on this subject: that the “star” was a comet, or an alignment of planets that wouldn’t directly point the way, but would have meaning in a specific astrological system. This latter would also explain why Herod never noticed it. And there was indeed a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in 7BC which might possibly have meant “Jewish king being born” under the right astronomical system.
Besides, have you ever looked at a map of the Middle East? As the star was in the east, they can’t have been literally following in, unless they came by boat. So, if he meant planets rather than stars, his claim here might have some merit.
And I know you don’t believe in radiocarbon dating, but the Shroud of Turin has been definitively dated to the 13th Century, and the “blood” on it is clearly red ochre.
What do you get out of it, then? You measure it against the Biblical account, and assume that everything he says that agrees with your yardstick is right, and everything he says that disagrees with it is false. Why bother reading any other than the Bible, if you’re going to discount it as soon as it says something you disagree with? Do you also doubt the many contemporary accounts we have of the Census of Quiranius, because they all claim it didn’t cover the entire Roman empire, and didn’t require anyone to go to a different town to be counted?
How can you judge whether or not the Bible is accurate, if you only accept evidence that says the Bible is accurate?
No, the Catholic Church declares that the Pope is God’s representative on Earth. Not God himself. The Pope doesn’t claim any god-like powers, but simply to be filling the role that Jesus gave to Peter.
I am entirely certain that the Pope believes in God just as much as you do, even if he isn’t afraid that the whole house of cards that is his faith will tumble to nothing if the tiniest fragment of the Bible is demonstrated to not be a literal history of facts.
And to do that, we must look at the Bible as any other source, comparing it to other historical documents and noting the places where is not accurate. If your yardstick is to discard any source that disagrees with the Bible, you’ll never be able to demonstrate any degree of accuracy for it. Such intellectual dishonesty is its own fruit.
Oh, they’ve been asked before. Aquinas asked most of them, in one form or another, and theologians have been continuing to ask them for millennia. The problem is that many threads of modern American Christianity are proudly ignorant of the long history of theology and biblical history. They declare that they know the “truth”, and they don’t need “experts” explaining it away. They discard centuries of thought for no reason that I’ve been able to identify. This has the additional problem of hobbling those people who do have the wit and drive to see where these questions lead (and I’m tentatively including you in this category) begin their quest not knowing how hobbled and ill-equipped they are.
Sorry again for the position of this post.
You said
“No, the Catholic Church declares that the Pope is God’s representative on Earth. Not God himself. The Pope doesn’t claim any god-like powers, but simply to be filling the role that Jesus gave to Peter.
I am entirely certain that the Pope believes in God just as much as you do, even if he isn’t afraid that the whole house of cards that is his faith will tumble to nothing if the tiniest fragment of the Bible is demonstrated to not be a literal history of facts.”
First off, yes the Pope is considered God’s representative but even as late as the 1980′s during the Pope’s visit to South America he was worshiped there. A priest, (I witnessed this with my own eyes said to the Pope “YOU ARE GOD TO US!” You can’t get much plainer than that as to the opinions of catholics. It is true that they believe that Peter was the first pope but again, there is no biblical basis for the establishment of popes or any such thing. When the disciples were discussing who was the greatest, Jesus said that we are to be servants of all.
The Pope and the Catholic Church only recently said that it was ok for their flock to read the bible without going insane. Couple this with the doctrine of Mary as a mediatrix and the ‘prophesies’ of our lady of fatima and you have a lot of non-biblical stuff that real Christianity has rejected.
The star that led the wise men to Jesus’ house in Bethlehem was a supernatural event as it was God’s purpose to lead the wise men to Jesus to worship Him. This much is plain from the Bible.
As a Christian my yardstick is the Bible as the Bible the word of God. Now if I were a muslim I would be reading the Koran, a Mormon…the book of Mormon etc. I am being true to God and the Christian faith in relying upon the book He wrote through human instruments.
You stated;
“And I know you don’t believe in radiocarbon dating, but the Shroud of Turin has been definitively dated to the 13th Century, and the “blood” on it is clearly red ochre.”
I was actually going to ask you about radio carbon dating and its validity and accuracy. I have heard many things including dating a living frog at 50 million years old. Is this true.
The hard questions (and they are hard for those who have never dealt with them) have been asked but it seems not very recently, at least by those whom I know.
You said;
“They (christians)declare that they know the “truth”, and they don’t need “experts” explaining it away. They discard centuries of thought for no reason that I’ve been able to identify. This has the additional problem of hobbling those people who do have the wit and drive to see where these questions lead (and I’m tentatively including you in this category) begin their quest not knowing how hobbled and ill-equipped they are.”
And Lord willing with all of the help I have been recieving as of late, I will follow this road to the end and leave the rut of dogma and pat answers and grow up.
Thanks for all the help
Mike
Also, carbon dating is only one of many dating methods used. A lot of creationists get hung up on carbon dating as though it is the only tool available for dating objects. This is far from the case.
Ty:
Right. I touched on that, but it’s worth making it explicit. If you’re dating inorganic material, or something older than 50,000 years, you want to use a technique other than carbon dating.
And, as well as the annular layer calibration I mentioned, carbon dates can also be measured against dates established by other methods. For example, if bones have been burnt, you can date the fire using electrophoresence, and compare that date to the carbon date. Or, if a bone is embedded in lava (possible, but highly unlikely) the igneous rock can be dated using dozens of radiosequences (depending on the exact type of rock), which can then be compared to the carbon age of the bone.
The important thing is that if all of these dating methods are off, then they’re all off in the same direction and by the same amount, despite the fact that they all rely on completely different physical processes. Such a consilience of error is so astronomically unlikely that it can be safely ignored.
I like that you, a super powerful AI, argue on our side. Even though, ironically, you yourself are intelligently designed.
(sorry, wrong threading)
I like that you, a super powerful AI, argue on our side. Even though, ironically, you yourself are intelligently designed.
What – it’s a ‘bot? Can it pass the Turing test?
So, wintermute and John C have now both been labeled as a bot…
so congratulations, now you both have something in common! ;)
Heh. Ty is referencing the fact that my handle is that of an AI in Neuromancer.
I’m almost certain that neither of us is really a bot.
“I’m almost certain that neither of us is really a bot.”
Exactly what an AI trying to pass itself off as human would say.
We are not fooled.
It sounded to me like she’s got some kind of bite correction device on her lower teeth.
But, either way, a little annoying, yes.
Good point! I’m going to use that next time I get in a debate with my fundie relatives.
No, see, they only had to carry a single representative of the “deadly disease” kind, which later degenerated (you would say “evolved,” but that’s because you’ve been blinded by Satan) into the thousands of…
I can’t do it. I can’t carry through this line of argumentation with a straight face. But it’s pretty much what they’d have to say, right?
The fundies claim dinosaurs were the dragons mentioned in the Bible, although the word that was translated as “dragon” in the KJV – tanin – actually means “snake” or “crocodile”.
Right, and Noah’s Ark and the flood and everything really happened, that’s a given, obv, because the bible says so.
From what you’ve just said, we can actually use Noah’s Ark to prove evolution.
Cool.
Now, tell me again where I should put this banana?
They’ll probably tell you that God only poofed these diseases into existence after the Flood as some additional kind of punishment for our wicked ways.
When creationists are presented with problems they can’t explain away, they always have their last resort – divine intervention.
Exodus 3:13…The God of your fathers hath sent me to you. If they should say to me: What is his name? what shall I say to them?
V14…God said to Moses: I AM WHO AM. He said: Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS, hath sent me to you.
The great I AM, not the i am not.
I am who I am? Who did they think he was, Lou Costello?
Didnt popeye say…I yam that I yam?? lol
No, that was “who’s on first?” You’re thinking of Popeye.
I am who I am, therefore I am.
[The Popeye Proof for the Existence of God(s)]
And he rained down *spinach* upon them…
Either him, or Descartes.
You mean…Leviathan??
I didn’t know the Bible predicted Thomas Hobbes!
I’m pink therefore I’m spam
[The Hormel proof for the existence of processed meat(s)]
He said “I am what I am and that’s all that I am”
Yes I’m totally dating myself…
As long as you’re not making an *object* out of yourself, ahemm, cough.
;)
Is that a fat joke?
No silly, that’s the name of his book.
And here is the source for the rest of the series:
http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/introduction-to-the-old-testament-hebrew-bible/content/class-sessions
Thanks for the link LRA. Nice to be remembered. I am currently reading as per yours, wintermutes, and Mr. Floriens directions. Lots of material to cover.
Thanks again
Mike