Questions on the Flood for TWD39 (or any theist)

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Questions on the Flood for TWD39 (or any theist)

This thread is mainly for TWD39, though other people who believe the flood, Noah and so on really happened are welcome to chime in. It is an extension of the other thread discussing language and the tower of Babel, which started some questions about Noah's flood.

If you believe that the Flood happened as the Bible states, then you must have rational answers to the following questions:

 

 

1 Were babies also killed in the flood? Were they deemed sinful, or just collateral damage? What about the unborn? (in case you think people are born with sin..) Is God an innocent baby killer?

2 If the flood covered the whole earth, where did the water come from, and where did it go afterwards?

3 If the flood was caused by rain for 40 days and nights, and rain covered the earth, then it would need to rain 112 million cubic kilometers each day. The water vapour that’s needed to be suspended in the air to achieve this would render the air unbreathable - people would have drowned by breathing this air. How did Noah and his family survive this?

4 How did the animals get to the arc? If Noah gathered them, how did he get around the world so quickly? If the animals came of their own accord, how did the giant tortoises get there in time? How did animals that can’t swim cross seas to get there?

5 How did Noah feed the animals? Some animals have very specific diets (pandas eat only bamboo, koalas eat only eucalyptus, for example) so how did Noah get these foods, which don’t grow in Mesopotamia?

6 How did Noah keep meat fresh for the hungry carnivores?

7 How did the freshwater fish survive? Did the arc carry fresh water? How were these fish collected and stored?

8 The flood would have killed all plant life. What would the ‘saved’ herbivores eat? What about those that feed only on adult trees that take a long time to grow?

9 What about the carnivores? They must have had to eat the herbivores – they were on the arc for over a year, so any corpses would be completely rotten, as well as being buried under sediment.

10 Where would the animals find fresh water to sustain themselves?

11 How did the plants survive being underwater for more than a year? Some might have seeds that survive, but vast numbers of plant species would have become extinct. How come the are still here today?

12 When the flood ended, only 6 people survived that would go on to breed. The bible indicates that the tower of Babel happened 100 years after the flood. How were there enough people to build the tower, which must have been massive?

13 How did the Native Americans, and Australian Aboriginals get to their continents (Which don’t have land bridges with Asia) after the flood?

14 How did God ‘create’ the rainbow as part of the promise he’d never flood the whole world again? If there was refracted sunlight and rain ever before the flood, there must have been rainbows.

15 Why did god change his mind about how many of each type of animal had to be taken into the arc? Genesis 6 says take 2 of each, Genesis 7 says take up to 7.

16 Lastly, why did god go to all the trouble?

 

 

 


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caposkia wrote:I did some

caposkia wrote:

I did some more homework.  2 million years is way too far back be it that homosapiens hadn't developed in africa until about 200,000 years ago... it was 150,000 years ago that they migrated to near east and more like 50,000 years ago that they were able to migrate to teh far east Asia.  See Wiki...

So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred

1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.

2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and

3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.

 

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


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Jabberwocky wrote:So, when

Jabberwocky wrote:

So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred

1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.

2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and

3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.

 

We just don't know.  I'm not the one claiming we have to know when it happened.

1.  of course not

2.  right

3. sure. 

So take another guess.  When do you think it happened? 


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caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred

1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.

2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and

3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.

 

We just don't know.  I'm not the one claiming we have to know when it happened.

1.  of course not

2.  right

3. sure. 

So take another guess.  When do you think it happened? 

Wow, time for a lesson in basic logic.

Let's call "X" the number of years since of Noah's flood, you concede that

X>3,000 because of 1.

Then you concede per 2 that it must have been a time when people could communicate using language. I am going to be super generous here and say that means X<600,000. that is assuming that neanderthals had developed an advanced language, something which is usually disputed.

Then per 3 you agree that people must have been geographically close. We established earlier that means at a minimum that X>2,000,000.

So what number can X be if X>3,000 and X<600,000 and X>2,500,000?

 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Beyond Saving wrote:caposkia

Beyond Saving wrote:

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred

1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.

2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and

3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.

 

We just don't know.  I'm not the one claiming we have to know when it happened.

1.  of course not

2.  right

3. sure. 

So take another guess.  When do you think it happened? 

Wow, time for a lesson in basic logic.

Let's call "X" the number of years since of Noah's flood, you concede that

X>3,000 because of 1.

Then you concede per 2 that it must have been a time when people could communicate using language. I am going to be super generous here and say that means X<600,000. that is assuming that neanderthals had developed an advanced language, something which is usually disputed.

Then per 3 you agree that people must have been geographically close. We established earlier that means at a minimum that X>2,000,000.

So what number can X be if X>3,000 and X<600,000 and X>2,500,000?

 

humans weren't said to have existed in Africa much before 200,000 years ago, so #3 doesn't really work as I found out in my research since then which has been discussed.    So it can be X < 200,000 but likely X > 60,000 be it that by then or somewhere between 60,000 years ago and 125,000 years ago humanity is said to have started to spread to Euroasia. 


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caposkia wrote:I did some

caposkia wrote:

I did some more homework.  2 million years is way too far back be it that homosapiens hadn't developed in africa until about 200,000 years ago... it was 150,000 years ago that they migrated to near east and more like 50,000 years ago that they were able to migrate to teh far east Asia.  See Wiki...

Well we graduated to wiki, slightly more accurate than the bible...

Yes, that is when homo sapiens left Africa, but there are other species of humans which have donated their genes to the pool. Are you now saying that the bible only applies to homo sapiens? Before when I asked you, you said that all hominids were human in the bible. Are we now dropping that assumption?

That position also creates a bunch of inconsistencies that we haven't discussed yet. For example, how did we end up with Neanderthal genes in our blood if they all drowned in a world wide flood before homo sapiens left Africa?

It also means that Adam and Eve weren't particularly unique.

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Beyond Saving wrote:Well we

Beyond Saving wrote:

Well we graduated to wiki, slightly more accurate than the bible...

Yes, that is when homo sapiens left Africa, but there are other species of humans which have donated their genes to the pool. Are you now saying that the bible only applies to homo sapiens? Before when I asked you, you said that all hominids were human in the bible. Are we now dropping that assumption?

That position also creates a bunch of inconsistencies that we haven't discussed yet. For example, how did we end up with Neanderthal genes in our blood if they all drowned in a world wide flood before homo sapiens left Africa?

It also means that Adam and Eve weren't particularly unique.

I'm assuming that Adam and Eve were the first humans... considering the migration patterns of humans and what really applies when discussing where people were when the flood happened, then it seems we would have to assume they were homo sapiens. 

We have Nanderthal genes in our blood for the same reason why the DNA of a Watermelon is 98% that of a jellyfish.  Also, if you consider that Noah and his family survived, if there were a connection beforehand, it makes sense that it can be passed down through them. 

Also, Adam and Eve were the first humans... other than them being first... what did you think was so unique about them?  (maybe bring that one to the other thread)

 


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caposkia wrote:We have

caposkia wrote:

We have Nanderthal genes in our blood for the same reason why the DNA of a Watermelon is 98% that of a jellyfish.  Also, if you consider that Noah and his family survived, if there were a connection beforehand, it makes sense that it can be passed down through them. 

Blatantly false. You can't even get the bullshit creationist argument right. Watermelons do not share 98% of DNA with jellyfish, and that isn't even the argument creationists make.

Your Noah theory also falls flat. Not all humans have Neanderthal genes, particularly those in Africa. So the interbreeding must have happened after Noah, but then, how did they all survive the flood? Also, Neanderthals are the largest species homo sapiens interbred with, not the only species.

 

caposkia wrote:

Also, Adam and Eve were the first humans... other than them being first... what did you think was so unique about them?  (maybe bring that one to the other thread)

 

If they were homo sapien they were not the first humans. Intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making humans lived millions of years before homo sapiens. So when  God created Adam in his image... well it wasn't the first time.

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred

1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.

2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and

3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.

 

We just don't know.  I'm not the one claiming we have to know when it happened.

1.  of course not

2.  right

3. sure. 

So take another guess.  When do you think it happened? 

By agreeing with those 3 points, you have just agreed that the flood required complex enough communication, and a world-wide human population that hadn't spread far yet. Unfortunately, the population spread before language developed more complex functions (in different ways in different regions I might add). How much more do I have to dumb this down?

Timeline:

1. Human-like species roamed the earth.

2. Human-like species spread out very far

3. Human-like species developed complex enough language to convey what is said to have been conveyed in the time of the flood.

Due to the fact that 3 occurred after 2, and not before 2, it leaves no possible year in which your flood could have occurred. I won't take a guess when the flood did occur, because I just ruled it out completely (once in a paragraph, and once in a handy list form). Beyond Saving also addressed your responses effectively (thanks for filling in BS, I was on vacation for a while). Quit asking me to merely GUESS when it occurred, when I'm showing you that it didn't.

EDIT - BTW, thanks BeyondSaving for filling in while I was on vacation. You outlined more or less the same thing in yet another way.

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


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Beyond Saving

Beyond Saving wrote:

Blatantly false. You can't even get the bullshit creationist argument right. Watermelons do not share 98% of DNA with jellyfish, and that isn't even the argument creationists make.

Your Noah theory also falls flat. Not all humans have Neanderthal genes, particularly those in Africa. So the interbreeding must have happened after Noah, but then, how did they all survive the flood? Also, Neanderthals are the largest species homo sapiens interbred with, not the only species.

maybe because I'm not trying to use the "bullshit creationist argument".  Your case has so many holes in it it's really hard for me to take your "blatently false" statement seriously.  For example, if the interbreeding had to have happened after Noah, then you must have finally figured out the dating of the flood... so please share.  Otherwise, you have no case here. 

Beyond Saving wrote:

If they were homo sapien they were not the first humans. Intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making humans lived millions of years before homo sapiens. So when  God created Adam in his image... well it wasn't the first time.

or by scientific standard, they were not homo sapien.  Nothing in scripture would define them as homo sapien or any other specific "intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making human".  This would not be a sound defense against scripture.  The only thing we can get from scripture is that they were the first people made in God's image. 

Going back to the flood, this really doesn't make or break the case for the flood. 


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Jabberwocky wrote:caposkia

Jabberwocky wrote:

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred

1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.

2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and

3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.

 

We just don't know.  I'm not the one claiming we have to know when it happened.

1.  of course not

2.  right

3. sure. 

So take another guess.  When do you think it happened? 

By agreeing with those 3 points, you have just agreed that the flood required complex enough communication, and a world-wide human population that hadn't spread far yet. Unfortunately, the population spread before language developed more complex functions (in different ways in different regions I might add). How much more do I have to dumb this down?

maybe as far as how you have deduced the introduction of complex language without writing to support it.  Consider that complex language must have happened long before reading and writing occurred. 

Jabberwocky wrote:

Timeline:

1. Human-like species roamed the earth.

2. Human-like species spread out very far

3. Human-like species developed complex enough language to convey what is said to have been conveyed in the time of the flood.

Due to the fact that 3 occurred after 2, and not before 2, it leaves no possible year in which your flood could have occurred. I won't take a guess when the flood did occur, because I just ruled it out completely (once in a paragraph, and once in a handy list form). Beyond Saving also addressed your responses effectively (thanks for filling in BS, I was on vacation for a while). Quit asking me to merely GUESS when it occurred, when I'm showing you that it didn't.

EDIT - BTW, thanks BeyondSaving for filling in while I was on vacation. You outlined more or less the same thing in yet another way.

They also allegedly had 120 years to spread the word according to Genesis 6 ... how far can a human travel by foot or animal in 120 years?  By foot, let's see... Wiki says the average human travels 1 mile in about 20 minutes.  That's a total possible distance of 120 miles a day, but that would be assuming they never stop walking... obviously they'd have to stop, they'd have to eat, sleep and tell the news in every community, so let's cut that distance in half.  60 miles a day... better yet, let's for the sake of argument assume that they took their time and only traveled 20 miles a day.  That would be 7300 miles in 1 year, 876,000 miles in 120 years.  This keep in mind is assuming that God did not speak to people in dreams like He's known to do from time to time.  This is also assuming the people did all the traveling by foot, not using animal transportation.   Be it that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,901.5 miles or so.. that pretty much allows plenty of time for word to spread across the globe if humans had spread that far.  Distance is poor ground to stand on against scripture.

To address the statement above... you have not showed me that it didn't occur and your case has to do with when could it have occurred so if you're going to tell me it didn't when I estimate it could have, then I need to hear your assumption... it didn't is not an appropriate response to that, rather what you just posted was.  Though your distance theory is now out, so what's next?

 


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Jabberwocky wrote:caposkia

Jabberwocky wrote:

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So, when did the flood occur then? The following conditions would have to be met for it to have occurred

1. Couldn't have been less than a few thousand years ago, as history was being recorded, and it would have been mentioned.

2. People had to have ample communication skills to communicate with one another the concepts that the bible writes of people communicating with one another about, and

3. People couldn't have been too far spread out, in order to allow the news of the impending flood to spread to every human.

 

We just don't know.  I'm not the one claiming we have to know when it happened.

1.  of course not

2.  right

3. sure. 

So take another guess.  When do you think it happened? 

By agreeing with those 3 points, you have just agreed that the flood required complex enough communication, and a world-wide human population that hadn't spread far yet. Unfortunately, the population spread before language developed more complex functions (in different ways in different regions I might add). How much more do I have to dumb this down?

maybe as far as how you have deduced the introduction of complex language without writing to support it.  Consider that complex language must have happened long before reading and writing occurred. 

Jabberwocky wrote:

Timeline:

1. Human-like species roamed the earth.

2. Human-like species spread out very far

3. Human-like species developed complex enough language to convey what is said to have been conveyed in the time of the flood.

Due to the fact that 3 occurred after 2, and not before 2, it leaves no possible year in which your flood could have occurred. I won't take a guess when the flood did occur, because I just ruled it out completely (once in a paragraph, and once in a handy list form). Beyond Saving also addressed your responses effectively (thanks for filling in BS, I was on vacation for a while). Quit asking me to merely GUESS when it occurred, when I'm showing you that it didn't.

EDIT - BTW, thanks BeyondSaving for filling in while I was on vacation. You outlined more or less the same thing in yet another way.

They also allegedly had 120 years to spread the word according to Genesis 6 ... how far can a human travel by foot or animal in 120 years?  By foot, let's see... Wiki says the average human travels 1 mile in about 20 minutes.  That's a total possible distance of 120 miles a day, but that would be assuming they never stop walking... obviously they'd have to stop, they'd have to eat, sleep and tell the news in every community, so let's cut that distance in half.  60 miles a day... better yet, let's for the sake of argument assume that they took their time and only traveled 20 miles a day.  That would be 7300 miles in 1 year, 876,000 miles in 120 years.  This keep in mind is assuming that God did not speak to people in dreams like He's known to do from time to time.  This is also assuming the people did all the traveling by foot, not using animal transportation.   Be it that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,901.5 miles or so.. that pretty much allows plenty of time for word to spread across the globe if humans had spread that far.  Distance is poor ground to stand on against scripture.

To address the statement above... you have not showed me that it didn't occur and your case has to do with when could it have occurred so if you're going to tell me it didn't when I estimate it could have, then I need to hear your assumption... it didn't is not an appropriate response to that, rather what you just posted was.  Though your distance theory is now out, so what's next?

 


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caposkia wrote: They also

caposkia wrote:

 

They also allegedly had 120 years to spread the word according to Genesis 6 ... how far can a human travel by foot or animal in 120 years?  By foot, let's see... Wiki says the average human travels 1 mile in about 20 minutes.  That's a total possible distance of 120 miles a day, but that would be assuming they never stop walking... obviously they'd have to stop, they'd have to eat, sleep and tell the news in every community, so let's cut that distance in half.  60 miles a day... better yet, let's for the sake of argument assume that they took their time and only traveled 20 miles a day.  That would be 7300 miles in 1 year, 876,000 miles in 120 years.  This keep in mind is assuming that God did not speak to people in dreams like He's known to do from time to time.  This is also assuming the people did all the traveling by foot, not using animal transportation.   Be it that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,901.5 miles or so.. that pretty much allows plenty of time for word to spread across the globe if humans had spread that far.  Distance is poor ground to stand on against scripture.

 

and yet the same flipping bible claims that it took a large group of people forty years to cross a couple hundred miles of desert...

 

 

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


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iwbiek wrote:caposkia

iwbiek wrote:

caposkia wrote:

 

They also allegedly had 120 years to spread the word according to Genesis 6 ... how far can a human travel by foot or animal in 120 years?  By foot, let's see... Wiki says the average human travels 1 mile in about 20 minutes.  That's a total possible distance of 120 miles a day, but that would be assuming they never stop walking... obviously they'd have to stop, they'd have to eat, sleep and tell the news in every community, so let's cut that distance in half.  60 miles a day... better yet, let's for the sake of argument assume that they took their time and only traveled 20 miles a day.  That would be 7300 miles in 1 year, 876,000 miles in 120 years.  This keep in mind is assuming that God did not speak to people in dreams like He's known to do from time to time.  This is also assuming the people did all the traveling by foot, not using animal transportation.   Be it that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,901.5 miles or so.. that pretty much allows plenty of time for word to spread across the globe if humans had spread that far.  Distance is poor ground to stand on against scripture.

 

and yet the same flipping bible claims that it took a large group of people forty years to cross a couple hundred miles of desert...

 

 

 

 

                               No iwbeik, the widest point of the Sinai is 120 miles [Port Said to Gaza], any half-assed sheppard could make that in a fortnight. Yet if you are talking "grazing area to grazing area"  it's only 75 miles; and it still took the misguided a-holes 40 years to make it. With no reason to believe any of this cock-and-bull story.

 

 

         

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iwbiek wrote:caposkia

iwbiek wrote:

caposkia wrote:

 

They also allegedly had 120 years to spread the word according to Genesis 6 ... how far can a human travel by foot or animal in 120 years?  By foot, let's see... Wiki says the average human travels 1 mile in about 20 minutes.  That's a total possible distance of 120 miles a day, but that would be assuming they never stop walking... obviously they'd have to stop, they'd have to eat, sleep and tell the news in every community, so let's cut that distance in half.  60 miles a day... better yet, let's for the sake of argument assume that they took their time and only traveled 20 miles a day.  That would be 7300 miles in 1 year, 876,000 miles in 120 years.  This keep in mind is assuming that God did not speak to people in dreams like He's known to do from time to time.  This is also assuming the people did all the traveling by foot, not using animal transportation.   Be it that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,901.5 miles or so.. that pretty much allows plenty of time for word to spread across the globe if humans had spread that far.  Distance is poor ground to stand on against scripture.

 

and yet the same flipping bible claims that it took a large group of people forty years to cross a couple hundred miles of desert...

Right and a 15 minute shopping trip turns into hours when my family comes along... wonder why that is? 

 

 


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caposkia wrote:Right and a

caposkia wrote:
Right and a 15 minute shopping trip turns into hours when my family comes along... wonder why that is?

oh wow, what a solid fucking analogy. you really made short work of that problematic passage. i wonder why people on this site haven't given up arguing with you long ago. there's clearly no contest...

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


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caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

By agreeing with those 3 points, you have just agreed that the flood required complex enough communication, and a world-wide human population that hadn't spread far yet. Unfortunately, the population spread before language developed more complex functions (in different ways in different regions I might add). How much more do I have to dumb this down?

maybe as far as how you have deduced the introduction of complex language without writing to support it.  Consider that complex language must have happened long before reading and writing occurred. 

Did spoken word occur before reading and writing? That's pretty well certain, yes. However, written word predated actual literature by hundreds, perhaps a thousand years. It was used for record keeping and such initially. You know, the things thought to be important to people of the time. Oddly, they didn't feel compelled at all to write about ANY gods, world-wide floods, and other such things. This leaves the Christian with an even more awkward problem.

The earliest literary authors known by name were Ptahhotep & Enheduanna. They both wrote of gods and godesses, which would have been a blasphemous word thing Yahweh if the old testament is to be considered authentic. They seemed to be quite unaware of Yahweh altogether. Surely if he were righteous, and felt it appropriate at the time to make his existence and omnipotence known to the Jewish people at that time, he could have popped into Egypt and said "hi" to their people, in order to steer them in the correct direction as well. No writing by the two seems to suggest that he did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing#Literature_and_writing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptahhotep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enheduanna

^^^ LOOK!! Actual links relevant to what I'm stating, instead of just ending every post with "see wiki".....

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Timeline:

1. Human-like species roamed the earth.

2. Human-like species spread out very far

3. Human-like species developed complex enough language to convey what is said to have been conveyed in the time of the flood.

Due to the fact that 3 occurred after 2, and not before 2, it leaves no possible year in which your flood could have occurred. I won't take a guess when the flood did occur, because I just ruled it out completely (once in a paragraph, and once in a handy list form). Beyond Saving also addressed your responses effectively (thanks for filling in BS, I was on vacation for a while). Quit asking me to merely GUESS when it occurred, when I'm showing you that it didn't.

EDIT - BTW, thanks BeyondSaving for filling in while I was on vacation. You outlined more or less the same thing in yet another way.

They also allegedly had 120 years to spread the word according to Genesis 6 ... how far can a human travel by foot or animal in 120 years?  By foot, let's see... Wiki says the average human travels 1 mile in about 20 minutes.  That's a total possible distance of 120 miles a day, but that would be assuming they never stop walking... obviously they'd have to stop, they'd have to eat, sleep and tell the news in every community, so let's cut that distance in half.  60 miles a day... better yet, let's for the sake of argument assume that they took their time and only traveled 20 miles a day.  That would be 7300 miles in 1 year, 876,000 miles in 120 years.  This keep in mind is assuming that God did not speak to people in dreams like He's known to do from time to time.  This is also assuming the people did all the traveling by foot, not using animal transportation.   Be it that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,901.5 miles or so.. that pretty much allows plenty of time for word to spread across the globe if humans had spread that far.  Distance is poor ground to stand on against scripture.

To address the statement above... you have not showed me that it didn't occur and your case has to do with when could it have occurred so if you're going to tell me it didn't when I estimate it could have, then I need to hear your assumption... it didn't is not an appropriate response to that, rather what you just posted was.  Though your distance theory is now out, so what's next?

Umm, you know that merely circumventing the globe would not have you able to talk to everyone, right? The surface area of the Earth is over 510 million square kilometres. What you're proposing is NOT feasible at all, even if you WERE given 120 years.

I know that the bible claims that people lived for 900+ years back then, but without any evidence to support that, you can easily toss that idea in the garbage. The evidence points to the limit of human longevity being around 120 years (with slight variations between specimens). No examples even in the 150-200 range have ever been presented. Without such examples, you are the one with the burden of proof here. Given that Noah wouldn't have started this quest as an infant, this would take at least 2 generations, likely 3 or 4 given the probability that people lived shorter lives then due to worse nutrition, far worse medical knowledge, etc.

When it comes to god speaking to people in dreams, what a pathetic copout. Seriously pathetic! The fact that you spend most of your paragraph discussing distance means that you're somewhat attached (at least on the outside) to the feasibility of what we're discussing. But then you tack that onto your post, just so that you feel you've won the argument when you posted it, no matter what I respond with. If you were truly confident of the feasibility of Noah and his family telling the whole world, that would be unnecessary. If god could just tell everyone himself (which you just suggested that he could), then Noah and his family telling everyone would be unnecessary. I can't believe you can't see how much of a crock this is!

 

EDIT - Grammar and removed irrelevant poorly written paragraph.

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


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caposkia wrote:Beyond Saving

caposkia wrote:

Beyond Saving wrote:

Blatantly false. You can't even get the bullshit creationist argument right. Watermelons do not share 98% of DNA with jellyfish, and that isn't even the argument creationists make.

Your Noah theory also falls flat. Not all humans have Neanderthal genes, particularly those in Africa. So the interbreeding must have happened after Noah, but then, how did they all survive the flood? Also, Neanderthals are the largest species homo sapiens interbred with, not the only species.

maybe because I'm not trying to use the "bullshit creationist argument".  Your case has so many holes in it it's really hard for me to take your "blatently false" statement seriously.  For example, if the interbreeding had to have happened after Noah, then you must have finally figured out the dating of the flood... so please share.  Otherwise, you have no case here. 

If Noah had neanderthal DNA and every human who wasn't related to Noah died in the flood as the story claims, then every human in the world today would have neanderthal DNA. Not every human in the world has neanderthal DNA, therefore, if Noah and family were the only survivors of the flood, then the neanderthal DNA must have been mixed in after the flood.

And no, a watermelon does not share 98% of its DNA with a jellyfish. That is flat out wrong, even within just watermelons, few watermelons share over 98% of their DNA with other types of watermelons. Compared to jellyfish, watermelons have radically different DNA structures. This is either a number you ripped off from a creationist website and misunderstood (many creationist websites argue that both jellyfish and watermelons are 98% water and compare that to human and chimpanzee DNA comparisons- which is not only an absurd comparison but also factually false) or it is a number you simply pulled out of your ass. 

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v45/n1/full/ng.2470.html#t1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3268669/

 

caposkia wrote:

Beyond Saving wrote:

If they were homo sapien they were not the first humans. Intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making humans lived millions of years before homo sapiens. So when  God created Adam in his image... well it wasn't the first time.

or by scientific standard, they were not homo sapien.  Nothing in scripture would define them as homo sapien or any other specific "intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making human".  This would not be a sound defense against scripture.  The only thing we can get from scripture is that they were the first people made in God's image. 

Going back to the flood, this really doesn't make or break the case for the flood. 

So Adam and Eve were not homo sapien? Which is it? Either they were homo sapien or they were not. It makes a big difference in the flood discussion, because if they were homo sapien the flood had to have happened within the last few hundred thousand years, if they were not and the Bible includes all hominids as "man" than the flood could have occurred any time within several million years and your point that homo sapiens didn't leave Africa until a couple hundred thousand years ago is moot. If Adam and Eve were homo sapien, than it is rather suspicious that God said nothing about the other human species anywhere in the Bible.

 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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caposkia wrote:They also

caposkia wrote:

They also allegedly had 120 years to spread the word according to Genesis 6 ... how far can a human travel by foot or animal in 120 years?  By foot, let's see... Wiki says the average human travels 1 mile in about 20 minutes.  That's a total possible distance of 120 miles a day, but that would be assuming they never stop walking... obviously they'd have to stop, they'd have to eat, sleep and tell the news in every community, so let's cut that distance in half.  60 miles a day... better yet, let's for the sake of argument assume that they took their time and only traveled 20 miles a day.  That would be 7300 miles in 1 year, 876,000 miles in 120 years.  This keep in mind is assuming that God did not speak to people in dreams like He's known to do from time to time.  This is also assuming the people did all the traveling by foot, not using animal transportation.   Be it that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,901.5 miles or so.. that pretty much allows plenty of time for word to spread across the globe if humans had spread that far.  Distance is poor ground to stand on against scripture.

To address the statement above... you have not showed me that it didn't occur and your case has to do with when could it have occurred so if you're going to tell me it didn't when I estimate it could have, then I need to hear your assumption... it didn't is not an appropriate response to that, rather what you just posted was.  Though your distance theory is now out, so what's next?

ROFLMAO,

You obviously have not spent much time traveling cross country. Remember, this is a time before horses, roads and any other modern convenience. They would have had to carry absolutely everything they needed to survive on their backs. An experienced backpacker might be able to maintain 3 mph with a light backpack (maybe 15% of body weight) if they are hustling and are on a trail with modest elevation changes. Even so, maintaining that speed for 7 hours is pretty impressive, but possible, for a physically fit and well fed person.  1.5-2 mph is about how fast your average recreational hiker travels on trails. A ruck march in the military will have a speed of 4-5 mph and after breaks will be 3-3.5 mph with 50 -100 pounds. Typically, they go a distance of 20-30 miles and require you to be extremely physically fit. In any ruck march, many people are going to be left behind or will sustain injuries (which are usually minor with today's medicine, but thousands of years ago could have been deadly) and those injuries occur despite modern boots which are designed specifically to protect from such injuries. No one can maintain that speed long term.  

A human trying to maintain that speed without the benefit of a modern backpack and having to carry everything necessary to survive and traveling off trail would go dramatically slower. He would have to choose between carrying water and food, which is really heavy especially before the invention of freeze dried meals, or count on being able to find it throughout the day- another task which takes significant amounts of time away from walking and leads to slower progress when you weaken due to malnutrition or insufficient water.

Add in that we are not talking about taking a hike on the Adirondack trail maintained by modern lawnmowers with most of the fallen trees removed by chainsaws and well traveled by fellow hikers. Off trail you are doing really good to be hitting 2 miles an hour, even in a relatively clear area. Start getting into jungle or mountains and you are only going a few miles a day, or you could spend several hours to days just figuring out how to get across a river.

Once again you are just spouting complete bullshit from your sheer ignorance.  

 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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iwbiek wrote:caposkia

iwbiek wrote:
caposkia wrote:
Right and a 15 minute shopping trip turns into hours when my family comes along... wonder why that is?
oh wow, what a solid fucking analogy. you really made short work of that problematic passage. i wonder why people on this site haven't given up arguing with you long ago. there's clearly no contest...

travel takes longer in a group.  People still talk to me because they have yet to prove anything actually problematic to me about the passage.


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Jabberwocky wrote:Did spoken

Jabberwocky wrote:

Did spoken word occur before reading and writing? That's pretty well certain, yes. However, written word predated actual literature by hundreds, perhaps a thousand years. It was used for record keeping and such initially. You know, the things thought to be important to people of the time. Oddly, they didn't feel compelled at all to write about ANY gods, world-wide floods, and other such things. This leaves the Christian with an even more awkward problem.

not at all.  spoken word, be it that the ability to read and write was only among probably 1% of the population (a guess) would have been a very valid means of transferring information before writing became more common place.  Even in the times the scriptures were said to have been written down the majority of the populations were not able to read or write.   Also parchment was not something easy to come by and chipping rocks wasn't an efficient way of writing a story.  What was written was considered of some importance even then.  It is generally understood that most OT scripture was verbally passed down before being written.

Jabberwocky wrote:

The earliest literary authors known by name were Ptahhotep & Enheduanna. They both wrote of gods and godesses, which would have been a blasphemous word thing Yahweh if the old testament is to be considered authentic. They seemed to be quite unaware of Yahweh altogether. Surely if he were righteous, and felt it appropriate at the time to make his existence and omnipotence known to the Jewish people at that time, he could have popped into Egypt and said "hi" to their people, in order to steer them in the correct direction as well. No writing by the two seems to suggest that he did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing#Literature_and_writing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptahhotep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enheduanna

^^^ LOOK!! Actual links relevant to what I'm stating, instead of just ending every post with "see wiki".....

I didn't think wiki was so hard to use, but I'll keep that in mind for the future. 

Of course if they are the earliest known authors, then likely scriptures hadn't been written yet as well.. God did not reveal his name till much later in scriptures anyway.  God also says in scripture that He is known by many names.  Were any of the gods or godesses mentioned similar to the Biblical God? 

Jabberwocky wrote:

Umm, you know that merely circumventing the globe would not have you able to talk to everyone, right? The surface area of the Earth is over 510 million square kilometres. What you're proposing is NOT feasible at all, even if you WERE given 120 years.

the point is, even if people were spread out to Asia, they likely hadn't gotten to the America's yet they still could have reached those extensions of tribes... also are you assuming only one person went out and spread the word?  Noah was building an ark... don't you think "rumor" spread from town to town over 100+ years that some dude was out there building this insane floating zoo because his God said the Earth was going to be destroyed?   It's all in perspective.    Before cell phones and internet, rumors' spread across schools of over 1000 kids in 1 day.   They'd even get to neighboring towns in 48 hours or less... granted there's the phone, but rumors travel in Biblical times in similar manner, except that it would be from one traveler to the next... everyone would listen to travelers because that was really the only way of getting news from other towns unless they decided to take the journey themselves. 

Jabberwocky wrote:

I know that the bible claims that people lived for 900+ years back then, but without any evidence to support that, you can easily toss that idea in the garbage. The evidence points to the limit of human longevity being around 120 years (with slight variations between specimens). No examples even in the 150-200 range have ever been presented. Without such examples, you are the one with the burden of proof here. Given that Noah wouldn't have started this quest as an infant, this would take at least 2 generations, likely 3 or 4 given the probability that people lived shorter lives then due to worse nutrition, far worse medical knowledge, etc.

If I'm here trying to prove to you that scripture is valid... I wouldn't start with the story of Noah.  I'm here asking you to show me why I shouldn't believe it.  Excessive aging of humans?  sure that's a good reason to question it,.. but my question is then why didn't the ancient peoples of that time dismiss it knowing people couldn't live that long?  We can guess that the story was written much later and that people ultimately believe that God shortened their lives over time as scripture states, but how does that disprove the notion?

Jabberwocky wrote:

When it comes to god speaking to people in dreams, what a pathetic copout. Seriously pathetic! The fact that you spend most of your paragraph discussing distance means that you're somewhat attached (at least on the outside) to the feasibility of what we're discussing. But then you tack that onto your post, just so that you feel you've won the argument when you posted it, no matter what I respond with. If you were truly confident of the feasibility of Noah and his family telling the whole world, that would be unnecessary. If god could just tell everyone himself (which you just suggested that he could), then Noah and his family telling everyone would be unnecessary. I can't believe you can't see how much of a crock this is!

be it that it's written in scripture many times that God warns the people by this means or that, it's logical to assume the same could have happened... let's put the load of crock into perspective though... dreams?  crock... noah's family traveling?  crock (noah had to build the ark)... travelers spreading rumors over 120 years... crock??? eh.... some people actually going out telling tribe after tribe?  crock.... eh... but we really dont' know how far spread out people were...

What your response tells me is you're looking for the first excuse to dismiss the story and don't really want to put an effort in searching for "truth" which can include effectively dismissing this story as truth.  Usually the pathetic copout falls on those making the claim... instead give me sound reason why that's not a basis for the word spreading if this story actually happened or admit that your last statement was the "pathetic copout". 

Just for the record... I'm not tallying points and declaring myself winner of any argument... rather I'm challenging you to show me how your perspective is the correct one.  When you respond like that I have no reason to doubt my understanding. 

 

 


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Beyond Saving wrote:If Noah

Beyond Saving wrote:

If Noah had neanderthal DNA and every human who wasn't related to Noah died in the flood as the story claims, then every human in the world today would have neanderthal DNA. Not every human in the world has neanderthal DNA, therefore, if Noah and family were the only survivors of the flood, then the neanderthal DNA must have been mixed in after the flood.

or it had been misplaced over time which also happens with DNA.  Also, let's consider another logic.. if Neanderthals existed... would they not have been included in the tally of animals on the boat? or do you think they were counted as humans. 

Beyond Saving wrote:

And no, a watermelon does not share 98% of its DNA with a jellyfish. That is flat out wrong, even within just watermelons, few watermelons share over 98% of their DNA with other types of watermelons. Compared to jellyfish, watermelons have radically different DNA structures. This is either a number you ripped off from a creationist website and misunderstood (many creationist websites argue that both jellyfish and watermelons are 98% water and compare that to human and chimpanzee DNA comparisons- which is not only an absurd comparison but also factually false) or it is a number you simply pulled out of your ass. 

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v45/n1/full/ng.2470.html#t1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3268669/

why would that be on a creationist website? 

Forget the jellyfish dna issue... everything shares dna structures up to a certain percentage.  Many cases it's quite small... This is a major side track and really wasn't supposed to be a detractor from the point.  Forget I ever said it.  maybe I was wrong, maybe I wasn't... you and I both know I''ll admit it when I'm wrong... as far as the DNA of Jellyfish Vs. watermelon... I don't really care.  The point still remains and we should look at it either from the angle that neanderthals were counted among the animals on the ark or that their dna diminished over time to a degree that it is undetectable in certain human strands. 

Beyond Saving wrote:

So Adam and Eve were not homo sapien? Which is it? Either they were homo sapien or they were not. It makes a big difference in the flood discussion, because if they were homo sapien the flood had to have happened within the last few hundred thousand years, if they were not and the Bible includes all hominids as "man" than the flood could have occurred any time within several million years and your point that homo sapiens didn't leave Africa until a couple hundred thousand years ago is moot. If Adam and Eve were homo sapien, than it is rather suspicious that God said nothing about the other human species anywhere in the Bible.

 

You said; "Beyond Saving wrote:

If they were homo sapien they were not the first humans. Intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making humans lived millions of years before homo sapiens. So when  God created Adam in his image... well it wasn't the first time."

I said the Bible doesn't specify... it only states that they were "man" made in Gods image.  If intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making humans can be something other than homo sapiens, then Adam and Eve can fall under any category of intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making humans and likely did exist millions of years ago. 

You're right, either they were or they weren't.... I can't tell you which they were, but deducing from what you said, they likely weren't homo sapien. 

What goal posts again?  no, I just never considered intelligent walking, socializing, tool-making humans that weren't homo sapien.  Learned something new, whaddya know.

 


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caposkia wrote:travel takes

caposkia wrote:

travel takes longer in a group.  People still talk to me because they have yet to prove anything actually problematic to me about the passage.

and yet ancient man was able to traverse the entire globe in less than two centuries, according to you.  was everybody travelling alone?

as for "proving" anything "problematic," beyond did a damn good job in post #318, and i can say my own limited experience hiking in the smokies, the rockies, the foothills of the appalachians, and the high tatras of northern slovakia definitely corroborates his points.  we await your response with baited breath.

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


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Beyond Saving wrote:caposkia

Beyond Saving wrote:

caposkia wrote:

They also allegedly had 120 years to spread the word according to Genesis 6 ... how far can a human travel by foot or animal in 120 years?  By foot, let's see... Wiki says the average human travels 1 mile in about 20 minutes.  That's a total possible distance of 120 miles a day, but that would be assuming they never stop walking... obviously they'd have to stop, they'd have to eat, sleep and tell the news in every community, so let's cut that distance in half.  60 miles a day... better yet, let's for the sake of argument assume that they took their time and only traveled 20 miles a day.  That would be 7300 miles in 1 year, 876,000 miles in 120 years.  This keep in mind is assuming that God did not speak to people in dreams like He's known to do from time to time.  This is also assuming the people did all the traveling by foot, not using animal transportation.   Be it that the circumference of the Earth at the equator is only 24,901.5 miles or so.. that pretty much allows plenty of time for word to spread across the globe if humans had spread that far.  Distance is poor ground to stand on against scripture.

To address the statement above... you have not showed me that it didn't occur and your case has to do with when could it have occurred so if you're going to tell me it didn't when I estimate it could have, then I need to hear your assumption... it didn't is not an appropriate response to that, rather what you just posted was.  Though your distance theory is now out, so what's next?

ROFLMAO,

You obviously have not spent much time traveling cross country. Remember, this is a time before horses, roads and any other modern convenience. They would have had to carry absolutely everything they needed to survive on their backs. An experienced backpacker might be able to maintain 3 mph with a light backpack (maybe 15% of body weight) if they are hustling and are on a trail with modest elevation changes. Even so, maintaining that speed for 7 hours is pretty impressive, but possible, for a physically fit and well fed person.  1.5-2 mph is about how fast your average recreational hiker travels on trails. A ruck march in the military will have a speed of 4-5 mph and after breaks will be 3-3.5 mph with 50 -100 pounds. Typically, they go a distance of 20-30 miles and require you to be extremely physically fit. In any ruck march, many people are going to be left behind or will sustain injuries (which are usually minor with today's medicine, but thousands of years ago could have been deadly) and those injuries occur despite modern boots which are designed specifically to protect from such injuries. No one can maintain that speed long term.  

A human trying to maintain that speed without the benefit of a modern backpack and having to carry everything necessary to survive and traveling off trail would go dramatically slower. He would have to choose between carrying water and food, which is really heavy especially before the invention of freeze dried meals, or count on being able to find it throughout the day- another task which takes significant amounts of time away from walking and leads to slower progress when you weaken due to malnutrition or insufficient water.

Add in that we are not talking about taking a hike on the Adirondack trail maintained by modern lawnmowers with most of the fallen trees removed by chainsaws and well traveled by fellow hikers. Off trail you are doing really good to be hitting 2 miles an hour, even in a relatively clear area. Start getting into jungle or mountains and you are only going a few miles a day, or you could spend several hours to days just figuring out how to get across a river.

Once again you are just spouting complete bullshit from your sheer ignorance.  

 

could I say the same for you?  Let's cut the distance per day in half from what I said... so humans can travel a possible 60 miles a day... I cut it then said let's say they took their time and went 20 a day.  So i cut the original capability of a human way down already... let's cut that number in half again to 10 miles a day.  I actually did 10 miles per day bushwacking in the winter in new England... some of it was unkept trail.  Yes there was deep snow in some areas. I did it in 8 hours with a 60 lb pack.  I was probably the least fit person of my group at the time as well.  If I can do it in those conditions, ancients could have easily done it... that still covers 436,800 miles in 120 years.. per person.  You fail to take into consideration that the distance from tribe to tribe was likely not drastic and that the people could eat, sleep and refresh their supplies each time it also wasn't likely one person that did it all if that's the way the word was spread. 

Regardless of what you fail to take into consideration, you still have no case and your ignorance cries are starting to sound like the boy who cried wolf. 


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caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Did spoken word occur before reading and writing? That's pretty well certain, yes. However, written word predated actual literature by hundreds, perhaps a thousand years. It was used for record keeping and such initially. You know, the things thought to be important to people of the time. Oddly, they didn't feel compelled at all to write about ANY gods, world-wide floods, and other such things. This leaves the Christian with an even more awkward problem.

not at all.  spoken word, be it that the ability to read and write was only among probably 1% of the population (a guess) would have been a very valid means of transferring information before writing became more common place.  Even in the times the scriptures were said to have been written down the majority of the populations were not able to read or write.   Also parchment was not something easy to come by and chipping rocks wasn't an efficient way of writing a story.  What was written was considered of some importance even then.  It is generally understood that most OT scripture was verbally passed down before being written.

So what? It would still mean that god for some reason favoured one tribe (the Jewish) over another and didn't make himself known to the Egyptians. If believing in a false god is a serious sin, then Yahweh, knowing the multiplicity of invented gods all over the place, would be damning a lot of people to hell by being passive, and deciding to only appear clearly to the Jews. Funny how there isn't a story about the Abrahams and Noah's of the world believing in a false god first, and then having Yahweh reveal himself to them. It's written as if they just knew from the start. If the narrative were true, it would mean one of two things.

1. They guessed, and somehow guessed right, or

2. Yahweh clearly made himself known in a way that Abraham and Noah wouldn't doubt, but only afforded this luxury to a small select group of people over the course of human history.

That is NOT a god who wants people to believe in him.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

The earliest literary authors known by name were Ptahhotep & Enheduanna. They both wrote of gods and godesses, which would have been a blasphemous word thing Yahweh if the old testament is to be considered authentic. They seemed to be quite unaware of Yahweh altogether. Surely if he were righteous, and felt it appropriate at the time to make his existence and omnipotence known to the Jewish people at that time, he could have popped into Egypt and said "hi" to their people, in order to steer them in the correct direction as well. No writing by the two seems to suggest that he did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing#Literature_and_writing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptahhotep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enheduanna

^^^ LOOK!! Actual links relevant to what I'm stating, instead of just ending every post with "see wiki".....

I didn't think wiki was so hard to use, but I'll keep that in mind for the future. 

Of course if they are the earliest known authors, then likely scriptures hadn't been written yet as well.. God did not reveal his name till much later in scriptures anyway.  God also says in scripture that He is known by many names.  Were any of the gods or godesses mentioned similar to the Biblical God? 

Well, it took me some time searching similar articles to find the above. It's just the polite thing to do...the Christian thing as the term is often used coloquially Sticking out tongue.

Ok, so scriptures hadn't been written yet. However, you posited that they were passed down orally for a long time. So god's name would have been known if the bulk of events in the scriptures had happened by then, no?

On the gods being similar...as you're someone who seems to believe the major events in the bible, the bible certainly doesn't paint the Egyptians in believers of Yahweh (or of an acceptable substitute). Are you going to assume that MAYBE they believed in Yahweh but got some details wrong? If so, why did they get the details wrong, but the writers of the bible got them right?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Umm, you know that merely circumventing the globe would not have you able to talk to everyone, right? The surface area of the Earth is over 510 million square kilometres. What you're proposing is NOT feasible at all, even if you WERE given 120 years.

the point is, even if people were spread out to Asia, they likely hadn't gotten to the America's yet they still could have reached those extensions of tribes... also are you assuming only one person went out and spread the word?  Noah was building an ark... don't you think "rumor" spread from town to town over 100+ years that some dude was out there building this insane floating zoo because his God said the Earth was going to be destroyed?   It's all in perspective.    Before cell phones and internet, rumors' spread across schools of over 1000 kids in 1 day.   They'd even get to neighboring towns in 48 hours or less... granted there's the phone, but rumors travel in Biblical times in similar manner, except that it would be from one traveler to the next... everyone would listen to travelers because that was really the only way of getting news from other towns unless they decided to take the journey themselves. 

The story you believe has mass genocide occurring because everyone except for Noah and his family were un-righteous. Certainly if they believed that, they would attempt to straighten up and fly right. Clearly, god drowned them. What incentive would they have to be spreading this news? This rules everyone but 8 people out as people who would have spread the news that this calamity is real and imminent. 8 people couldn't spread that news in time. Sorry, your arguments are just getting more and more absurd.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

I know that the bible claims that people lived for 900+ years back then, but without any evidence to support that, you can easily toss that idea in the garbage. The evidence points to the limit of human longevity being around 120 years (with slight variations between specimens). No examples even in the 150-200 range have ever been presented. Without such examples, you are the one with the burden of proof here. Given that Noah wouldn't have started this quest as an infant, this would take at least 2 generations, likely 3 or 4 given the probability that people lived shorter lives then due to worse nutrition, far worse medical knowledge, etc.

If I'm here trying to prove to you that scripture is valid... I wouldn't start with the story of Noah.  I'm here asking you to show me why I shouldn't believe it.  Excessive aging of humans?  sure that's a good reason to question it,.. but my question is then why didn't the ancient peoples of that time dismiss it knowing people couldn't live that long?  We can guess that the story was written much later and that people ultimately believe that God shortened their lives over time as scripture states, but how does that disprove the notion?

I would like you to start a thread then (or maybe even a 1 on 1 debate with in that board, PM the mods about that if you like) of the part of the bible you WOULD like to most use to prove to me that scripture is valid. I welcome the challenge.

You shouldn't believe it because of all the reasons I stated. We're discussing that in this thread. Not once have you seemed to accept any of my points (or any other poster's points for that matter) as a compelling reason to disbelieve something which there is 0 evidence for....ZERO...in the first place.

The ancient people didn't dismiss it because they were very stupid compared to us. The bank of human knowledge was in its infancy, and due to the inability to communicate over large distances, it was fractured as well. Different regions knew a different set of things about the world. People were also very naive on topics of the supernatural, since many natural phenomenon we know the causes of now were attributed to gods. Things like lightning and natural disasters are a nice example. Hence, if you can convince someone that a supernatural agent exists (which was easy back then) it is not a stretch to convince them that 900 year old people did. They didn't understand biology at all, and thought all was attributable to gods. If a god wanted us to live to 900, and then chopped it down to 120 (although usually 45-70 probably back then), people would simply accept it. Remember, it's only been a few hundred years since Joseph Smith convinced people in America that native Americans were cursed ancient Jews...

Nothing about the writings disproves the notion. I suppose it's not "disproven" per se that people never lived to be 900 years old. However, it's impossible to 100% conclusively prove such a negative. But if you compare it to any limits you test, it's absurd to state that it could have happened. It would be like you proving you can lift 300lbs, and then 310. Then adding another 10 lbs, you find it's too difficult to lift. Then you go and say "I can lift 3 tonnes. You should believe it until you prove it wrong". That is absurd. We have seen that the limit of your ability to lift weight is just over 300lbs. We know that humans max is in ther 120 year old range. We know by historical records, and by testing people's health (and comparing when people die to those tests to verify how accurate predictions based on such tests are). It has been found that the lifespan of human cells is at around 120 years, and currently we don't have any technology to extend that much. Therefore, if someone told me of a 130 year old person, I could see it as a stretch, but plausible. A 900 year old person, however, is absurd. The correct train of thought is to think of it false unless proven true. You think of it as true, unless proven false, because your book says so. There's a name for that...a logical fallacy you've been erroneously attributing to people a lot. Special pleading rears its head again!

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

When it comes to god speaking to people in dreams, what a pathetic copout. Seriously pathetic! The fact that you spend most of your paragraph discussing distance means that you're somewhat attached (at least on the outside) to the feasibility of what we're discussing. But then you tack that onto your post, just so that you feel you've won the argument when you posted it, no matter what I respond with. If you were truly confident of the feasibility of Noah and his family telling the whole world, that would be unnecessary. If god could just tell everyone himself (which you just suggested that he could), then Noah and his family telling everyone would be unnecessary. I can't believe you can't see how much of a crock this is!

be it that it's written in scripture many times that God warns the people by this means or that, it's logical to assume the same could have happened... let's put the load of crock into perspective though... dreams?  crock... noah's family traveling?  crock (noah had to build the ark)... travelers spreading rumors over 120 years... crock??? eh.... some people actually going out telling tribe after tribe?  crock.... eh... but we really dont' know how far spread out people were...

What your response tells me is you're looking for the first excuse to dismiss the story and don't really want to put an effort in searching for "truth" which can include effectively dismissing this story as truth.  Usually the pathetic copout falls on those making the claim... instead give me sound reason why that's not a basis for the word spreading if this story actually happened or admit that your last statement was the "pathetic copout". 

Just for the record... I'm not tallying points and declaring myself winner of any argument... rather I'm challenging you to show me how your perspective is the correct one.  When you respond like that I have no reason to doubt my understanding. 

I'm not looking for an excuse to dismiss the story. It does that for itself because of how ridiculous the story is in the first place.

You already seemingly agreed that 8 people couldn't spread that news (sort of...then disagreed in other parts). Remember, 510 million square kms of Earth. So you suggest "oh, maybe others helped spread the news". These others were the unrighteous who were going to be damned. Why would they help spread the news?

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


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caposkia wrote:Beyond Saving

caposkia wrote:

Beyond Saving wrote:

If Noah had neanderthal DNA and every human who wasn't related to Noah died in the flood as the story claims, then every human in the world today would have neanderthal DNA. Not every human in the world has neanderthal DNA, therefore, if Noah and family were the only survivors of the flood, then the neanderthal DNA must have been mixed in after the flood.

or it had been misplaced over time which also happens with DNA.  Also, let's consider another logic.. if Neanderthals existed... would they not have been included in the tally of animals on the boat? or do you think they were counted as humans. 

How can DNA be "misplaced"? Lineage is traced through a Y chromosome trace or mitochondrial DNA, both of which are passed down unchanged. It can't be "misplaced" or lost.

 

caposkia wrote:

Forget the jellyfish dna issue... everything shares dna structures up to a certain percentage.  Many cases it's quite small... This is a major side track and really wasn't supposed to be a detractor from the point.  Forget I ever said it.  maybe I was wrong, maybe I wasn't... you and I both know I''ll admit it when I'm wrong... as far as the DNA of Jellyfish Vs. watermelon... I don't really care. 

The point is that most people today have Neanderthal DNA because homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. It isn't just a coincidence as you were trying to imply.

 

caposkia wrote:

The point still remains and we should look at it either from the angle that neanderthals were counted among the animals on the ark or that their dna diminished over time to a degree that it is undetectable in certain human strands. 

That isn't how it works. There are human populations that have never interbred with Neanderthals nor with anyone who has ancestors who did.

 

 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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caposkia wrote:could I say

caposkia wrote:

could I say the same for you? 

You can say anything, but you would probably be wrong.

 

caposkia wrote:

I cut it then said let's say they took their time and went 20 a day.

20 miles a day, every day, isn't taking their time. That is a grueling pace. I know, I have done it.

 

caposkia wrote:

  So i cut the original capability of a human way down already... let's cut that number in half again to 10 miles a day.  I actually did 10 miles per day bushwacking in the winter in new England... some of it was unkept trail.  Yes there was deep snow in some areas. I did it in 8 hours with a 60 lb pack.  I was probably the least fit person of my group at the time as well.  If I can do it in those conditions, ancients could have easily done it...

Yes, 10 miles a day is reasonable... until you reach the Himalayas. It wasn't easy for ancients to do anything. They didn't have hiking boots, packaged food, plastic water bottles, modern backpacks or any of the other modern conveniences you undoubtedly used on your hike.

 

caposkia wrote:

that still covers 436,800 miles in 120 years.. per person. 

If you walk 10 miles a day, every day. I suppose they went 120 years without getting sick, developing stress fractures, breaking a bone, getting blisters or taking time off to make essentials like clothing. You do realize they couldn't just stop at Walmart to buy a new coat right? You seem completely oblivious how damn difficult and how much time and energy went into simply trying to stay alive in the ancient world.

 

caposkia wrote:

You fail to take into consideration that the distance from tribe to tribe was likely not drastic and that the people could eat, sleep and refresh their supplies each time it also wasn't likely one person that did it all if that's the way the word was spread. 

Considering that we know contact between cultures was limited, the distance between tribes was likely very large. The human population is much more dense today and there are still parts of Asia where you can be a hundred miles from the nearest town. You also fail to consider that they didn't have any way of knowing where the next tribe was. You could very easily walk within a mile of them and not notice. Also, it is extremely unlikely that every tribe encountered would be hospitable. Humans can be very cruel, especially if you tell them your God is the only God, and by the way he is going to drown you... ask Jesus. And since no one believed the message, evidenced by no one else getting on the Ark, it is highly unlikely anyone spent time walking around spreading the story.

You also ignore the reality of language barriers.

 

caposkia wrote:

Regardless of what you fail to take into consideration, you still have no case and your ignorance cries are starting to sound like the boy who cried wolf. 

I have only scratched the surface of the things you have failed to take into consideration and I have already pointed out several problems with the story that make it improbable. Every post you make highlights another area of your ignorance, like the idea that Neanderthal DNA was lost in humans who don't have it. And I am only pointing it out when it is in an area I am knowledgeable about. Since I don't know everything, I can only imagine how many of your claims I haven't called you out on are equally inaccurate.

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Jabberwocky wrote:So what?

Jabberwocky wrote:

So what? It would still mean that god for some reason favoured one tribe (the Jewish) over another and didn't make himself known to the Egyptians. If believing in a false god is a serious sin, then Yahweh, knowing the multiplicity of invented gods all over the place, would be damning a lot of people to hell by being passive, and deciding to only appear clearly to the Jews. Funny how there isn't a story about the Abrahams and Noah's of the world believing in a false god first, and then having Yahweh reveal himself to them. It's written as if they just knew from the start. If the narrative were true, it would mean one of two things.

1. They guessed, and somehow guessed right, or

2. Yahweh clearly made himself known in a way that Abraham and Noah wouldn't doubt, but only afforded this luxury to a small select group of people over the course of human history.

That is NOT a god who wants people to believe in him.

So what?  there goes your case.  Nice defense here, except you decided to jump a few decades into the future and lost focus of the OP

Jabberwocky wrote:

Ok, so scriptures hadn't been written yet. However, you posited that they were passed down orally for a long time. So god's name would have been known if the bulk of events in the scriptures had happened by then, no?

according to scripture, God was known by many names, so no. Also see (Ex. 6)

Jabberwocky wrote:

On the gods being similar...as you're someone who seems to believe the major events in the bible, the bible certainly doesn't paint the Egyptians in believers of Yahweh (or of an acceptable substitute). Are you going to assume that MAYBE they believed in Yahweh but got some details wrong? If so, why did they get the details wrong, but the writers of the bible got them right?

Same reason why the other many hundreds of scripts that didn't make it into the bible were wrong... they may not have been inspired by God to write or tell it.  I'm going to say that MAYBE Egyptian leaders did not accept belief in Yahweh.

Jabberwocky wrote:

The story you believe has mass genocide occurring because everyone except for Noah and his family were un-righteous. Certainly if they believed that, they would attempt to straighten up and fly right. Clearly, god drowned them. What incentive would they have to be spreading this news? This rules everyone but 8 people out as people who would have spread the news that this calamity is real and imminent. 8 people couldn't spread that news in time. Sorry, your arguments are just getting more and more absurd.

again, some dude is building a massive floating zoo because his alleged god is going to destroy the world... you don't have to agree with the rumor to spread it.  The truth was, Noah was building an arc, thats what got spread... people are going to ask why.

Jabberwocky wrote:

I would like you to start a thread then (or maybe even a 1 on 1 debate with in that board, PM the mods about that if you like) of the part of the bible you WOULD like to most use to prove to me that scripture is valid. I welcome the challenge.

You shouldn't believe it because of all the reasons I stated. We're discussing that in this thread. Not once have you seemed to accept any of my points (or any other poster's points for that matter) as a compelling reason to disbelieve something which there is 0 evidence for....ZERO...in the first place.

I have trouble accepting them because despite what you believe, they're not very compelling... it's throwing darts in the dark hoping one random point hits.  I've already refuted the timeline issue and just refuted the way word spread issue... what next?  Do you actually have compelling reasoning or just reasons why you don't accept it.  I'm not finding much motivation here to start a new thread based on this response really.  Welcoming the challenge would mean you'd have to do actual homework and come up with honest, well researched compelling answers to why I should not accept whatever it is I present as a reason to accept.

Jabberwocky wrote:

Nothing about the writings disproves the notion. I suppose it's not "disproven" per se that people never lived to be 900 years old. However, it's impossible to 100% conclusively prove such a negative. But if you compare it to any limits you test, it's absurd to state that it could have happened. It would be like you proving you can lift 300lbs, and then 310. Then adding another 10 lbs, you find it's too difficult to lift. Then you go and say "I can lift 3 tonnes. You should believe it until you prove it wrong". That is absurd. We have seen that the limit of your ability to lift weight is just over 300lbs. We know that humans max is in ther 120 year old range. We know by historical records, and by testing people's health (and comparing when people die to those tests to verify how accurate predictions based on such tests are). It has been found that the lifespan of human cells is at around 120 years, and currently we don't have any technology to extend that much. Therefore, if someone told me of a 130 year old person, I could see it as a stretch, but plausible. A 900 year old person, however, is absurd. The correct train of thought is to think of it false unless proven true. You think of it as true, unless proven false, because your book says so. There's a name for that...a logical fallacy you've been erroneously attributing to people a lot. Special pleading rears its head again!

nice..  maybe I should start a new thread just so you can come up with already refuted reasoning as to why I believe scripture is true.  Sounds redundantly entertaining.

It is impossible to prove a negative and yet you conclude on impossibility as you stated above.  Granted modern science suggests that people today cannot live past 120 years... or so...  but that says nothing of the genetic makeup of ancient peoples.  that is a study of modern peoples.  That study allegedly would also prove that the average lifespan of ancient peoples could not possibly be as young as 35, but there was quite a few generations where history shows it was.  but again, we shouldn't believe that because it cannot be proven through current genetic studies of humans.

Jabberwocky wrote:

I'm not looking for an excuse to dismiss the story. It does that for itself because of how ridiculous the story is in the first place.

ah, my bad, not looking for an excuse, just blindly doing it... I see

Jabberwocky wrote:

You already seemingly agreed that 8 people couldn't spread that news (sort of...then disagreed in other parts). Remember, 510 million square kms of Earth. So you suggest "oh, maybe others helped spread the news". These others were the unrighteous who were going to be damned. Why would they help spread the news?

answered it above.  usually people who spread rumors aren't spreading them because they support the action or reasoning.


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Beyond Saving wrote:How can

Beyond Saving wrote:

How can DNA be "misplaced"? Lineage is traced through a Y chromosome trace or mitochondrial DNA, both of which are passed down unchanged. It can't be "misplaced" or lost.

considering a genetic flaw can be as simple as one bit out of place amidst the code of milliions, it's easy to misplace that gene... not necessariliy not there, but just not discovered due to the commonalities. 

Beyond Saving wrote:

The point is that most people today have Neanderthal DNA because homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. It isn't just a coincidence as you were trying to imply.

ok, still doesn't bring progress to the point.. the easy counter to it then would be some of Noah's children interbread with them and some didn't... this DNA discussion is going to get nowhere


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Beyond Saving wrote:You can

Beyond Saving wrote:

You can say anything, but you would probably be wrong.

then why bother having a discussion with me.  Obviously you believe whatever I say is probably going to be wrong, so leave it be then.

Beyond Saving wrote:

20 miles a day, every day, isn't taking their time. That is a grueling pace. I know, I have done it.

me too... consider that it was their only way of travel... a grueling pace to someone who relies on that means of travel wouldn't be so grueling be it that it's what they do anyway.

Beyond Saving wrote:

Yes, 10 miles a day is reasonable... until you reach the Himalayas. It wasn't easy for ancients to do anything. They didn't have hiking boots, packaged food, plastic water bottles, modern backpacks or any of the other modern conveniences you undoubtedly used on your hike.

I'm sure they walked around the himalayas and if they're as tretcherous as you claim for the ancients, then the place would have been uninhabited anyway.  This is assuming they had spread that far... probably not... History shows Europe was the first to be populated. 

Beyond Saving wrote:

If you walk 10 miles a day, every day. I suppose they went 120 years without getting sick, developing stress fractures, breaking a bone, getting blisters or taking time off to make essentials like clothing. You do realize they couldn't just stop at Walmart to buy a new coat right? You seem completely oblivious how damn difficult and how much time and energy went into simply trying to stay alive in the ancient world.

...and you seem to be oblivious to the means of travel and how common it was for travelers to go from town to town or colony to colony... who said one person did it for 120 years?  I'm posing that one traveler could have gone from one colony to the neighboring colony... told the story of this crazy man in his colony... then another traveler leaving that colony or a few went to a few other colonies and told the same story and thus the word spread.

Beyond Saving wrote:

Considering that we know contact between cultures was limited, the distance between tribes was likely very large. The human population is much more dense today and there are still parts of Asia where you can be a hundred miles from the nearest town. You also fail to consider that they didn't have any way of knowing where the next tribe was. You could very easily walk within a mile of them and not notice. Also, it is extremely unlikely that every tribe encountered would be hospitable. Humans can be very cruel, especially if you tell them your God is the only God, and by the way he is going to drown you... ask Jesus. And since no one believed the message, evidenced by no one else getting on the Ark, it is highly unlikely anyone spent time walking around spreading the story.

You also ignore the reality of language barriers.

If the Bible is true, then the language barriers likely weren't there until Babylon.  We don't know how tribes were spread out... I would assume they were not very hospitable considering the level of sadness God had toward them.  You fail to consider how much of this discussion is becoming based on assumption.

Beyond Saving wrote:

I have only scratched the surface of the things you have failed to take into consideration and I have already pointed out several problems with the story that make it improbable. Every post you make highlights another area of your ignorance, like the idea that Neanderthal DNA was lost in humans who don't have it. And I am only pointing it out when it is in an area I am knowledgeable about. Since I don't know everything, I can only imagine how many of your claims I haven't called you out on are equally inaccurate.

I know you believe you're making progress in disproving this story, but I have discussed every reason and why that doesn't stand as sound reasoning whether you want to believe it or not.  if not, that's your choice.


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caposkia wrote:Beyond Saving

caposkia wrote:

Beyond Saving wrote:

The point is that most people today have Neanderthal DNA because homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. It isn't just a coincidence as you were trying to imply.

ok, still doesn't bring progress to the point.. the easy counter to it then would be some of Noah's children interbread with them and some didn't... this DNA discussion is going to get nowhere

You seem to have forgotten the original point. The reason why it is relevant to know whether or not crossbreeding happened before or after Noah is relevant to attempting to find a date range. If it happened before, then that would put the flood happening sometime within the last 100,000 years or so. If it happened after, then the flood must have happened more that 400,000 years ago (and incidentally, Noah couldn't have been homo sapien). Since the evidence available shows that not all humans are related to neanderthals, then the interbreeding must have occurred after Noah, since all humans are related to Noah. Therefore, your theory that the flood occurred within the last 200,000 years doesn't match the facts that we know.

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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caposkia wrote:Beyond Saving

caposkia wrote:

Beyond Saving wrote:

You can say anything, but you would probably be wrong.

then why bother having a discussion with me.  Obviously you believe whatever I say is probably going to be wrong, so leave it be then.

Well at the beginning you claimed to be open minded and said that if data could be presented that cast doubt on your story you would doubt it. However, it turns out that was apparently a lie. Hopefully, some lurker out there who actually is willing to accept new data and question their prior beliefs will learn something where you have not.

 

caposkia wrote:

I'm sure they walked around the himalayas and if they're as tretcherous as you claim for the ancients, then the place would have been uninhabited anyway.  This is assuming they had spread that far... probably not... History shows Europe was the first to be populated. 

Humans had spread that far over 2 million years ago, I already showed you that evidence and you already conceded you were wrong remember? So if you are assuming that they did not, then you are assuming the story happened more than 2 million years ago. Which is at odds with your more recent claim that it occurred within the last 200,000 years. It can't be both and both hypothesis have significant problems meshing with reality.

 

caposkia wrote:

...and you seem to be oblivious to the means of travel and how common it was for travelers to go from town to town or colony to colony... who said one person did it for 120 years?  I'm posing that one traveler could have gone from one colony to the neighboring colony... told the story of this crazy man in his colony... then another traveler leaving that colony or a few went to a few other colonies and told the same story and thus the word spread.

That is because until roughly 15,000 BC long distance trade was not common at all. One of the main things that caused humanity to go through the rapid technological development that got us out of the stone age was trade, which is why the populations of people who were disconnected from everyone else were technologically stunted. There is evidence that localized trade (within roughly 1,000 miles) did occur to a small extent in some tribes as far back as 150,000 years ago. But the idea that people routinely traveled from one tribe to the next is absurd. Most likely, most people lived their entire lives never seeing a person outside of their immediate tribe which is probably why many of them had high levels of inbreeding. 

 

caposkia wrote:

If the Bible is true, then the language barriers likely weren't there until Babylon.

Which is yet another story of the bible that doesn't match up with what we know about reality.

 

caposkia wrote:

  We don't know how tribes were spread out... I would assume they were not very hospitable considering the level of sadness God had toward them.  You fail to consider how much of this discussion is becoming based on assumption.

I am not the one making assumptions. We do know how tribes were spread out. We have a large collection of data on where humans lived, how they lived and their relationship to people in other parts of the world. You are appealing to ignorance in an area where we are not ignorant.

 

caposkia wrote:

I know you believe you're making progress in disproving this story, but I have discussed every reason and why that doesn't stand as sound reasoning whether you want to believe it or not.  if not, that's your choice.

Lol, no you haven't. You have changed your story in an attempt to avoid all the evidence I have presented and the problems that make the story highly doubtful. One post you assert the flood happened within 200,000 years and when the problems with that are presented you switch back to saying it must have happened much earlier. You make assumptions about humans farming, trading, speaking the same language etc. when the evidence available suggests that these things didn't happen at the dates we are talking about. Everything you post is based on assumptions, which more often than not are easily proved absurd. You have yet to offer a single bit of evidence on any of the topics we have discussed across either thread. Your entire belief rests on the bible being right no matter what external evidence suggests.

 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So what? It would still mean that god for some reason favoured one tribe (the Jewish) over another and didn't make himself known to the Egyptians. If believing in a false god is a serious sin, then Yahweh, knowing the multiplicity of invented gods all over the place, would be damning a lot of people to hell by being passive, and deciding to only appear clearly to the Jews. Funny how there isn't a story about the Abrahams and Noah's of the world believing in a false god first, and then having Yahweh reveal himself to them. It's written as if they just knew from the start. If the narrative were true, it would mean one of two things.

1. They guessed, and somehow guessed right, or

2. Yahweh clearly made himself known in a way that Abraham and Noah wouldn't doubt, but only afforded this luxury to a small select group of people over the course of human history.

That is NOT a god who wants people to believe in him.

So what?  there goes your case.  Nice defense here, except you decided to jump a few decades into the future and lost focus of the OP

Huh? I have no idea how this undermines my position. Address my point instead of simply saying that somehow I'm arguing against myself. Is point 1 true, or 2? Or some point 3 I'm missing? How and why.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Ok, so scriptures hadn't been written yet. However, you posited that they were passed down orally for a long time. So god's name would have been known if the bulk of events in the scriptures had happened by then, no?

according to scripture, God was known by many names, so no. Also see (Ex. 6)

So? If Genesis and Exodus were both passed down orally before the written word, then when Genesis was first written down, his name would have been known due to the knowledge of Exodus. If this was passed down by different people, then that hurts the reliability of the accounts even more. Hell, it could mean that they're about different gods, and the references to Genesis in Exodus were put in later just to tie the two together.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

On the gods being similar...as you're someone who seems to believe the major events in the bible, the bible certainly doesn't paint the Egyptians in believers of Yahweh (or of an acceptable substitute). Are you going to assume that MAYBE they believed in Yahweh but got some details wrong? If so, why did they get the details wrong, but the writers of the bible got them right?

Same reason why the other many hundreds of scripts that didn't make it into the bible were wrong... they may not have been inspired by God to write or tell it.  I'm going to say that MAYBE Egyptian leaders did not accept belief in Yahweh.

I'm going to say they didn't, because they had their own myths that are well documented, and were still believed in Egypt until centuries after your myth was complete (the whole Jesus bit). Don't pretend they might have just believed in Yahweh when there is no evidence of it, and there IS evidence of them believing in other gods, in a polytheist system. So...just...no. 

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

The story you believe has mass genocide occurring because everyone except for Noah and his family were un-righteous. Certainly if they believed that, they would attempt to straighten up and fly right. Clearly, god drowned them. What incentive would they have to be spreading this news? This rules everyone but 8 people out as people who would have spread the news that this calamity is real and imminent. 8 people couldn't spread that news in time. Sorry, your arguments are just getting more and more absurd.

 

again, some dude is building a massive floating zoo because his alleged god is going to destroy the world... you don't have to agree with the rumor to spread it.  The truth was, Noah was building an arc, thats what got spread... people are going to ask why.

Which is indistinguishable from some nutcase doomsday prepper. We see them all the time here. How many times has an embarrasingly large group of Americans in the last 20 years prepared for the rapture? How did people behave leading up to Y2K? Hell, my city had a big flood this year in the summer, and while some preparation is always necessary for such things, some things (like bottled water) just flew off store shelves.

"Some guy is building a giant boat, because he says the whole world is going to flood."

"Oh! I guess that means that the whole world is indeed going to flood, and we should turn to Yahweh!"

This conversation has never happened. Fucking guess why?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

I would like you to start a thread then (or maybe even a 1 on 1 debate with in that board, PM the mods about that if you like) of the part of the bible you WOULD like to most use to prove to me that scripture is valid. I welcome the challenge.

You shouldn't believe it because of all the reasons I stated. We're discussing that in this thread. Not once have you seemed to accept any of my points (or any other poster's points for that matter) as a compelling reason to disbelieve something which there is 0 evidence for....ZERO...in the first place.

I have trouble accepting them because despite what you believe, they're not very compelling... it's throwing darts in the dark hoping one random point hits.  I've already refuted the timeline issue and just refuted the way word spread issue... what next?  Do you actually have compelling reasoning or just reasons why you don't accept it.  I'm not finding much motivation here to start a new thread based on this response really.  Welcoming the challenge would mean you'd have to do actual homework and come up with honest, well researched compelling answers to why I should not accept whatever it is I present as a reason to accept.

The delusion is strong here. The timeline issue was never refuted. Once you stopped arguing with Noah and his family telling everyone themselves (as you realized that circumnavigating the globe wouldn't be enough), you then implied that people would tell other people. As I've just said above, that is insufficient warning.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Nothing about the writings disproves the notion. I suppose it's not "disproven" per se that people never lived to be 900 years old. However, it's impossible to 100% conclusively prove such a negative. But if you compare it to any limits you test, it's absurd to state that it could have happened. It would be like you proving you can lift 300lbs, and then 310. Then adding another 10 lbs, you find it's too difficult to lift. Then you go and say "I can lift 3 tonnes. You should believe it until you prove it wrong". That is absurd. We have seen that the limit of your ability to lift weight is just over 300lbs. We know that humans max is in ther 120 year old range. We know by historical records, and by testing people's health (and comparing when people die to those tests to verify how accurate predictions based on such tests are). It has been found that the lifespan of human cells is at around 120 years, and currently we don't have any technology to extend that much. Therefore, if someone told me of a 130 year old person, I could see it as a stretch, but plausible. A 900 year old person, however, is absurd. The correct train of thought is to think of it false unless proven true. You think of it as true, unless proven false, because your book says so. There's a name for that...a logical fallacy you've been erroneously attributing to people a lot. Special pleading rears its head again!

nice..  maybe I should start a new thread just so you can come up with already refuted reasoning as to why I believe scripture is true.  Sounds redundantly entertaining.

It is impossible to prove a negative and yet you conclude on impossibility as you stated above.  Granted modern science suggests that people today cannot live past 120 years... or so...  but that says nothing of the genetic makeup of ancient peoples. that is a study of modern peoples.  That study allegedly would also prove that the average lifespan of ancient peoples could not possibly be as young as 35, but there was quite a few generations where history shows it was.  but again, we shouldn't believe that because it cannot be proven through current genetic studies of humans.

To the bolded part, modern science DOES say something about ancient peoples. Not so much the genetics although we have found neanderthal DNA, so we do have information there. Did you know that examining the skeleton of a dead person can give an educated person a reasonable estimate to the person's age. Nobody has ever seen a pelvis showing such advanced aging. Ever. They can analyze the bone as well to make sure that it's made up of the same stuff that ours are (to rule out different bone materials that could have potentially increased the durability). Also, the old DNA we have of neanderthals and other hominids, nobody has ever uncovered some radical genetic difference that would allow a hominid to live to almost a millenium. In fact, as I said, no evidence has been found to one living to 200, let alone 900. Why did you ignore my entire analogy, then simply imply that it's possible anyway? My point was, it's impossible to prove a negative in a sense. However it has proven to be so implausible, that every serious biologist would gladly bet everthing they own once a year (or even once a day if someone could afford to pay them out) that real evidence for a 900 year old human is NEVER found.

You are willing to believe things that fly in the face of science if they're mentioned in the bible. Are you willing to make the same concession for other absurd claims? What if I told you there was a lemur that could talk 3 million years ago? Because we've never found one isn't proof that it didn't exist. What say you about the lemur who talked?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

I'm not looking for an excuse to dismiss the story. It does that for itself because of how ridiculous the story is in the first place.

ah, my bad, not looking for an excuse, just blindly doing it... I see

Yeah. I guess the reasonable thing to believe is that god wanted to punish an entire species by drowning them. A god that of course created the species, including their brains. So god was mad at this species for their tendencies and what they do, which is a result of what's going on in the brains that he created. Got it. Reductio ad absurdum? Perhaps. But that's only a logical fallacy if it's missing some important information, or otherwise distorts the point. The funny part is, it's the other side that misses an important detail. If the bible is true, then god created the human brain. That would mean that our tendencies and our nature was something that god chose for our brains. If god created humans perfect to begin with, then the fall could have never happened in the first place. The entire thing stinks.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

You already seemingly agreed that 8 people couldn't spread that news (sort of...then disagreed in other parts). Remember, 510 million square kms of Earth. So you suggest "oh, maybe others helped spread the news". These others were the unrighteous who were going to be damned. Why would they help spread the news?

answered it above.  usually people who spread rumors aren't spreading them because they support the action or reasoning.

And I said above, then the reasons for those receiving the news to believe that the flood was coming and was real are pretty well zilch. What chance does someone have to turn their life around then? None, unless they're conspiracy theorists who believe all sorts of other falsehoods (including potentially stories of false gods).

 

 

 

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


Jabberwocky
atheist
Posts: 411
Joined: 2012-04-21
User is offlineOffline
caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So what? It would still mean that god for some reason favoured one tribe (the Jewish) over another and didn't make himself known to the Egyptians. If believing in a false god is a serious sin, then Yahweh, knowing the multiplicity of invented gods all over the place, would be damning a lot of people to hell by being passive, and deciding to only appear clearly to the Jews. Funny how there isn't a story about the Abrahams and Noah's of the world believing in a false god first, and then having Yahweh reveal himself to them. It's written as if they just knew from the start. If the narrative were true, it would mean one of two things.

1. They guessed, and somehow guessed right, or

2. Yahweh clearly made himself known in a way that Abraham and Noah wouldn't doubt, but only afforded this luxury to a small select group of people over the course of human history.

That is NOT a god who wants people to believe in him.

So what?  there goes your case.  Nice defense here, except you decided to jump a few decades into the future and lost focus of the OP

Huh? I have no idea how this undermines my position. Address my point instead of simply saying that somehow I'm arguing against myself. Is point 1 true, or 2? Or some point 3 I'm missing? How and why.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Ok, so scriptures hadn't been written yet. However, you posited that they were passed down orally for a long time. So god's name would have been known if the bulk of events in the scriptures had happened by then, no?

according to scripture, God was known by many names, so no. Also see (Ex. 6)

So? If Genesis and Exodus were both passed down orally before the written word, then when Genesis was first written down, his name would have been known due to the knowledge of Exodus. If this was passed down by different people, then that hurts the reliability of the accounts even more. Hell, it could mean that they're about different gods, and the references to Genesis in Exodus were put in later just to tie the two together.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

On the gods being similar...as you're someone who seems to believe the major events in the bible, the bible certainly doesn't paint the Egyptians in believers of Yahweh (or of an acceptable substitute). Are you going to assume that MAYBE they believed in Yahweh but got some details wrong? If so, why did they get the details wrong, but the writers of the bible got them right?

Same reason why the other many hundreds of scripts that didn't make it into the bible were wrong... they may not have been inspired by God to write or tell it.  I'm going to say that MAYBE Egyptian leaders did not accept belief in Yahweh.

I'm going to say they didn't, because they had their own myths that are well documented, and were still believed in Egypt until centuries after your myth was complete (the whole Jesus bit). Don't pretend they might have just believed in Yahweh when there is no evidence of it, and there IS evidence of them believing in other gods, in a polytheist system. So...just...no. 

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

The story you believe has mass genocide occurring because everyone except for Noah and his family were un-righteous. Certainly if they believed that, they would attempt to straighten up and fly right. Clearly, god drowned them. What incentive would they have to be spreading this news? This rules everyone but 8 people out as people who would have spread the news that this calamity is real and imminent. 8 people couldn't spread that news in time. Sorry, your arguments are just getting more and more absurd.

 

again, some dude is building a massive floating zoo because his alleged god is going to destroy the world... you don't have to agree with the rumor to spread it.  The truth was, Noah was building an arc, thats what got spread... people are going to ask why.

Which is indistinguishable from some nutcase doomsday prepper. We see them all the time here. How many times has an embarrasingly large group of Americans in the last 20 years prepared for the rapture? How did people behave leading up to Y2K? Hell, my city had a big flood this year in the summer, and while some preparation is always necessary for such things, some things (like bottled water) just flew off store shelves.

"Some guy is building a giant boat, because he says the whole world is going to flood."

"Oh! I guess that means that the whole world is indeed going to flood, and we should turn to Yahweh!"

This conversation has never happened. Fucking guess why?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

I would like you to start a thread then (or maybe even a 1 on 1 debate with in that board, PM the mods about that if you like) of the part of the bible you WOULD like to most use to prove to me that scripture is valid. I welcome the challenge.

You shouldn't believe it because of all the reasons I stated. We're discussing that in this thread. Not once have you seemed to accept any of my points (or any other poster's points for that matter) as a compelling reason to disbelieve something which there is 0 evidence for....ZERO...in the first place.

I have trouble accepting them because despite what you believe, they're not very compelling... it's throwing darts in the dark hoping one random point hits.  I've already refuted the timeline issue and just refuted the way word spread issue... what next?  Do you actually have compelling reasoning or just reasons why you don't accept it.  I'm not finding much motivation here to start a new thread based on this response really.  Welcoming the challenge would mean you'd have to do actual homework and come up with honest, well researched compelling answers to why I should not accept whatever it is I present as a reason to accept.

The delusion is strong here. The timeline issue was never refuted. Once you stopped arguing with Noah and his family telling everyone themselves (as you realized that circumnavigating the globe wouldn't be enough), you then implied that people would tell other people. As I've just said above, that is insufficient warning.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Nothing about the writings disproves the notion. I suppose it's not "disproven" per se that people never lived to be 900 years old. However, it's impossible to 100% conclusively prove such a negative. But if you compare it to any limits you test, it's absurd to state that it could have happened. It would be like you proving you can lift 300lbs, and then 310. Then adding another 10 lbs, you find it's too difficult to lift. Then you go and say "I can lift 3 tonnes. You should believe it until you prove it wrong". That is absurd. We have seen that the limit of your ability to lift weight is just over 300lbs. We know that humans max is in ther 120 year old range. We know by historical records, and by testing people's health (and comparing when people die to those tests to verify how accurate predictions based on such tests are). It has been found that the lifespan of human cells is at around 120 years, and currently we don't have any technology to extend that much. Therefore, if someone told me of a 130 year old person, I could see it as a stretch, but plausible. A 900 year old person, however, is absurd. The correct train of thought is to think of it false unless proven true. You think of it as true, unless proven false, because your book says so. There's a name for that...a logical fallacy you've been erroneously attributing to people a lot. Special pleading rears its head again!

nice..  maybe I should start a new thread just so you can come up with already refuted reasoning as to why I believe scripture is true.  Sounds redundantly entertaining.

It is impossible to prove a negative and yet you conclude on impossibility as you stated above.  Granted modern science suggests that people today cannot live past 120 years... or so...  but that says nothing of the genetic makeup of ancient peoples. that is a study of modern peoples.  That study allegedly would also prove that the average lifespan of ancient peoples could not possibly be as young as 35, but there was quite a few generations where history shows it was.  but again, we shouldn't believe that because it cannot be proven through current genetic studies of humans.

To the bolded part, modern science DOES say something about ancient peoples. Not so much the genetics although we have found neanderthal DNA, so we do have information there. Did you know that examining the skeleton of a dead person can give an educated person a reasonable estimate to the person's age. Nobody has ever seen a pelvis showing such advanced aging. Ever. They can analyze the bone as well to make sure that it's made up of the same stuff that ours are (to rule out different bone materials that could have potentially increased the durability). Also, the old DNA we have of neanderthals and other hominids, nobody has ever uncovered some radical genetic difference that would allow a hominid to live to almost a millenium. In fact, as I said, no evidence has been found to one living to 200, let alone 900. Why did you ignore my entire analogy, then simply imply that it's possible anyway? My point was, it's impossible to prove a negative in a sense. However it has proven to be so implausible, that every serious biologist would gladly bet everthing they own once a year (or even once a day if someone could afford to pay them out) that real evidence for a 900 year old human is NEVER found.

You are willing to believe things that fly in the face of science if they're mentioned in the bible. Are you willing to make the same concession for other absurd claims? What if I told you there was a lemur that could talk 3 million years ago? Because we've never found one isn't proof that it didn't exist. What say you about the lemur who talked?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

I'm not looking for an excuse to dismiss the story. It does that for itself because of how ridiculous the story is in the first place.

ah, my bad, not looking for an excuse, just blindly doing it... I see

Yeah. I guess the reasonable thing to believe is that god wanted to punish an entire species by drowning them. A god that of course created the species, including their brains. So god was mad at this species for their tendencies and what they do, which is a result of what's going on in the brains that he created. Got it. Reductio ad absurdum? Perhaps. But that's only a logical fallacy if it's missing some important information, or otherwise distorts the point. The funny part is, it's the other side that misses an important detail. If the bible is true, then god created the human brain. That would mean that our tendencies and our nature was something that god chose for our brains. If god created humans perfect to begin with, then the fall could have never happened in the first place. The entire thing stinks.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

You already seemingly agreed that 8 people couldn't spread that news (sort of...then disagreed in other parts). Remember, 510 million square kms of Earth. So you suggest "oh, maybe others helped spread the news". These others were the unrighteous who were going to be damned. Why would they help spread the news?

answered it above.  usually people who spread rumors aren't spreading them because they support the action or reasoning.

And I said above, then the reasons for those receiving the news to believe that the flood was coming and was real are pretty well zilch. What chance does someone have to turn their life around then? None, unless they're conspiracy theorists who believe all sorts of other falsehoods (including potentially stories of false gods).

 

 

 

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


Jabberwocky
atheist
Posts: 411
Joined: 2012-04-21
User is offlineOffline
 caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

 

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So what? It would still mean that god for some reason favoured one tribe (the Jewish) over another and didn't make himself known to the Egyptians. If believing in a false god is a serious sin, then Yahweh, knowing the multiplicity of invented gods all over the place, would be damning a lot of people to hell by being passive, and deciding to only appear clearly to the Jews. Funny how there isn't a story about the Abrahams and Noah's of the world believing in a false god first, and then having Yahweh reveal himself to them. It's written as if they just knew from the start. If the narrative were true, it would mean one of two things.

1. They guessed, and somehow guessed right, or

2. Yahweh clearly made himself known in a way that Abraham and Noah wouldn't doubt, but only afforded this luxury to a small select group of people over the course of human history.

That is NOT a god who wants people to believe in him.

So what?  there goes your case.  Nice defense here, except you decided to jump a few decades into the future and lost focus of the OP

Huh? I have no idea how this undermines my position. Address my point instead of simply saying that somehow I'm arguing against myself. Is point 1 true, or 2? Or some point 3 I'm missing? How and why.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Ok, so scriptures hadn't been written yet. However, you posited that they were passed down orally for a long time. So god's name would have been known if the bulk of events in the scriptures had happened by then, no?

according to scripture, God was known by many names, so no. Also see (Ex. 6)

So? If Genesis and Exodus were both passed down orally before the written word, then when Genesis was first written down, his name would have been known due to the knowledge of Exodus. If this was passed down by different people, then that hurts the reliability of the accounts even more. Hell, it could mean that they're about different gods, and the references to Genesis in Exodus were put in later just to tie the two together.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

On the gods being similar...as you're someone who seems to believe the major events in the bible, the bible certainly doesn't paint the Egyptians in believers of Yahweh (or of an acceptable substitute). Are you going to assume that MAYBE they believed in Yahweh but got some details wrong? If so, why did they get the details wrong, but the writers of the bible got them right?

Same reason why the other many hundreds of scripts that didn't make it into the bible were wrong... they may not have been inspired by God to write or tell it.  I'm going to say that MAYBE Egyptian leaders did not accept belief in Yahweh.

I'm going to say they didn't, because they had their own myths that are well documented, and were still believed in Egypt until centuries after your myth was complete (the whole Jesus bit). Don't pretend they might have just believed in Yahweh when there is no evidence of it, and there IS evidence of them believing in other gods, in a polytheist system. So...just...no. 

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

The story you believe has mass genocide occurring because everyone except for Noah and his family were un-righteous. Certainly if they believed that, they would attempt to straighten up and fly right. Clearly, god drowned them. What incentive would they have to be spreading this news? This rules everyone but 8 people out as people who would have spread the news that this calamity is real and imminent. 8 people couldn't spread that news in time. Sorry, your arguments are just getting more and more absurd.

 

again, some dude is building a massive floating zoo because his alleged god is going to destroy the world... you don't have to agree with the rumor to spread it.  The truth was, Noah was building an arc, thats what got spread... people are going to ask why.

Which is indistinguishable from some nutcase doomsday prepper. We see them all the time here. How many times has an embarrasingly large group of Americans in the last 20 years prepared for the rapture? How did people behave leading up to Y2K? Hell, my city had a big flood this year in the summer, and while some preparation is always necessary for such things, some things (like bottled water) just flew off store shelves.

"Some guy is building a giant boat, because he says the whole world is going to flood."

"Oh! I guess that means that the whole world is indeed going to flood, and we should turn to Yahweh!"

This conversation has never happened. Fucking guess why?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

I would like you to start a thread then (or maybe even a 1 on 1 debate with in that board, PM the mods about that if you like) of the part of the bible you WOULD like to most use to prove to me that scripture is valid. I welcome the challenge.

You shouldn't believe it because of all the reasons I stated. We're discussing that in this thread. Not once have you seemed to accept any of my points (or any other poster's points for that matter) as a compelling reason to disbelieve something which there is 0 evidence for....ZERO...in the first place.

I have trouble accepting them because despite what you believe, they're not very compelling... it's throwing darts in the dark hoping one random point hits.  I've already refuted the timeline issue and just refuted the way word spread issue... what next?  Do you actually have compelling reasoning or just reasons why you don't accept it.  I'm not finding much motivation here to start a new thread based on this response really.  Welcoming the challenge would mean you'd have to do actual homework and come up with honest, well researched compelling answers to why I should not accept whatever it is I present as a reason to accept.

The delusion is strong here. The timeline issue was never refuted. Once you stopped arguing with Noah and his family telling everyone themselves (as you realized that circumnavigating the globe wouldn't be enough), you then implied that people would tell other people. As I've just said above, that is insufficient warning.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Nothing about the writings disproves the notion. I suppose it's not "disproven" per se that people never lived to be 900 years old. However, it's impossible to 100% conclusively prove such a negative. But if you compare it to any limits you test, it's absurd to state that it could have happened. It would be like you proving you can lift 300lbs, and then 310. Then adding another 10 lbs, you find it's too difficult to lift. Then you go and say "I can lift 3 tonnes. You should believe it until you prove it wrong". That is absurd. We have seen that the limit of your ability to lift weight is just over 300lbs. We know that humans max is in ther 120 year old range. We know by historical records, and by testing people's health (and comparing when people die to those tests to verify how accurate predictions based on such tests are). It has been found that the lifespan of human cells is at around 120 years, and currently we don't have any technology to extend that much. Therefore, if someone told me of a 130 year old person, I could see it as a stretch, but plausible. A 900 year old person, however, is absurd. The correct train of thought is to think of it false unless proven true. You think of it as true, unless proven false, because your book says so. There's a name for that...a logical fallacy you've been erroneously attributing to people a lot. Special pleading rears its head again!

nice..  maybe I should start a new thread just so you can come up with already refuted reasoning as to why I believe scripture is true.  Sounds redundantly entertaining.

It is impossible to prove a negative and yet you conclude on impossibility as you stated above.  Granted modern science suggests that people today cannot live past 120 years... or so...  but that says nothing of the genetic makeup of ancient peoples. that is a study of modern peoples.  That study allegedly would also prove that the average lifespan of ancient peoples could not possibly be as young as 35, but there was quite a few generations where history shows it was.  but again, we shouldn't believe that because it cannot be proven through current genetic studies of humans.

To the bolded part, modern science DOES say something about ancient peoples. Not so much the genetics although we have found neanderthal DNA, so we do have information there. Did you know that examining the skeleton of a dead person can give an educated person a reasonable estimate to the person's age. Nobody has ever seen a pelvis showing such advanced aging. Ever. They can analyze the bone as well to make sure that it's made up of the same stuff that ours are (to rule out different bone materials that could have potentially increased the durability). Also, the old DNA we have of neanderthals and other hominids, nobody has ever uncovered some radical genetic difference that would allow a hominid to live to almost a millenium. In fact, as I said, no evidence has been found to one living to 200, let alone 900. Why did you ignore my entire analogy, then simply imply that it's possible anyway? My point was, it's impossible to prove a negative in a sense. However it has proven to be so implausible, that every serious biologist would gladly bet everthing they own once a year (or even once a day if someone could afford to pay them out) that real evidence for a 900 year old human is NEVER found.

You are willing to believe things that fly in the face of science if they're mentioned in the bible. Are you willing to make the same concession for other absurd claims? What if I told you there was a lemur that could talk 3 million years ago? Because we've never found one isn't proof that it didn't exist. What say you about the lemur who talked?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

I'm not looking for an excuse to dismiss the story. It does that for itself because of how ridiculous the story is in the first place.

ah, my bad, not looking for an excuse, just blindly doing it... I see

Yeah. I guess the reasonable thing to believe is that god wanted to punish an entire species by drowning them. A god that of course created the species, including their brains. So god was mad at this species for their tendencies and what they do, which is a result of what's going on in the brains that he created. Got it. Reductio ad absurdum? Perhaps. But that's only a logical fallacy if it's missing some important information, or otherwise distorts the point. The funny part is, it's the other side that misses an important detail. If the bible is true, then god created the human brain. That would mean that our tendencies and our nature was something that god chose for our brains. If god created humans perfect to begin with, then the fall could have never happened in the first place. The entire thing stinks.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

You already seemingly agreed that 8 people couldn't spread that news (sort of...then disagreed in other parts). Remember, 510 million square kms of Earth. So you suggest "oh, maybe others helped spread the news". These others were the unrighteous who were going to be damned. Why would they help spread the news?

answered it above.  usually people who spread rumors aren't spreading them because they support the action or reasoning.

And I said above, then the reasons for those receiving the news to believe that the flood was coming and was real are pretty well zilch. What chance does someone have to turn their life around then? None, unless they're conspiracy theorists who believe all sorts of other falsehoods (including potentially stories of false gods).

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


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Beyond Saving wrote:caposkia

Beyond Saving wrote:

caposkia wrote:

Beyond Saving wrote:

The point is that most people today have Neanderthal DNA because homo sapiens interbred with Neanderthals. It isn't just a coincidence as you were trying to imply.

ok, still doesn't bring progress to the point.. the easy counter to it then would be some of Noah's children interbread with them and some didn't... this DNA discussion is going to get nowhere

You seem to have forgotten the original point. The reason why it is relevant to know whether or not crossbreeding happened before or after Noah is relevant to attempting to find a date range. If it happened before, then that would put the flood happening sometime within the last 100,000 years or so. If it happened after, then the flood must have happened more that 400,000 years ago (and incidentally, Noah couldn't have been homo sapien). Since the evidence available shows that not all humans are related to neanderthals, then the interbreeding must have occurred after Noah, since all humans are related to Noah. Therefore, your theory that the flood occurred within the last 200,000 years doesn't match the facts that we know.

you forget too that the 200,000 number has changed as well.  It ultimately does not bring light though to when the flood could have happened... other evidences put it more recently in history as discussed previously in this thread.  Also Neanderthals could have been among those taken onto the boat... There's just no way of knowing... humans could have breeded with them after the flood which suggests the DNA signatures... some people could have before the flood, during the flood and others not which explains why some people don't have the signatures.  In any case, it brings no light further to the date or the possibility of the flood happening or not.  If this is your ground, it's not convincing.  I need something more than Neanderthal DNA to show me this story didn't happen. 


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Beyond Saving wrote:caposkia

Beyond Saving wrote:

caposkia wrote:

then why bother having a discussion with me.  Obviously you believe whatever I say is probably going to be wrong, so leave it be then.

Well at the beginning you claimed to be open minded and said that if data could be presented that cast doubt on your story you would doubt it. However, it turns out that was apparently a lie. Hopefully, some lurker out there who actually is willing to accept new data and question their prior beliefs will learn something where you have not.

No haven't presented data that has cast doubt on the story.  You've tried to present data to cast doubt, but I've made cases against that that you have yet to rationally dispute.  Being open minded doesn't suggest that I'm going to be gullible.  Open minded means  I'm going to consider all evidences presented to me.  If you haven't noticed, I've been doing a lot of homework on the whole dating issue and have come to a clear consensus that exact dating of the flood cannot be determined based on evidences we have at this time...

you go on to try to prove dating impossible anyway by presenting evidences you seem to think archaeologists overlooked at some point and try to use that as proof that the story is impossible.  Why would you expect me to buy that?  If you're going to use dating as a means of discrediting this story, you're going to have to discover something that has yet to be discovered by humans.  Otherwise what you present is not sound evidence of dating the story's occurrence. 

The few who have tried to call me a liar have ended up looking like a fool.  Those who have talked to me for the years I've been on here know I don't lie.  I don't appreciate the accusation based on me not accepting what you think is evidence.

Beyond Saving wrote:

Humans had spread that far over 2 million years ago, I already showed you that evidence and you already conceded you were wrong remember? So if you are assuming that they did not, then you are assuming the story happened more than 2 million years ago. Which is at odds with your more recent claim that it occurred within the last 200,000 years. It can't be both and both hypothesis have significant problems meshing with reality.

new evidences have showed that it's not likely they have spread that far.. review the last few pages

Beyond Saving wrote:

That is because until roughly 15,000 BC long distance trade was not common at all. One of the main things that caused humanity to go through the rapid technological development that got us out of the stone age was trade, which is why the populations of people who were disconnected from everyone else were technologically stunted. There is evidence that localized trade (within roughly 1,000 miles) did occur to a small extent in some tribes as far back as 150,000 years ago. But the idea that people routinely traveled from one tribe to the next is absurd. Most likely, most people lived their entire lives never seeing a person outside of their immediate tribe which is probably why many of them had high levels of inbreeding. 

if that was the case, then the Bible can easily be discredited be it that most stories in scripture talk about people traveling and/or attacking/stealing from other tribes...

Beyond Saving wrote:

Which is yet another story of the bible that doesn't match up with what we know about reality.

but not for this thread

Beyond Saving wrote:

I am not the one making assumptions. We do know how tribes were spread out. We have a large collection of data on where humans lived, how they lived and their relationship to people in other parts of the world. You are appealing to ignorance in an area where we are not ignorant.

yet your backtracking in this discussion back to one of the original time presentations.   A lot has been presented since.

Beyond Saving wrote:

 

caposkia wrote:

I know you believe you're making progress in disproving this story, but I have discussed every reason and why that doesn't stand as sound reasoning whether you want to believe it or not.  if not, that's your choice.

Lol, no you haven't. You have changed your story in an attempt to avoid all the evidence I have presented and the problems that make the story highly doubtful. One post you assert the flood happened within 200,000 years and when the problems with that are presented you switch back to saying it must have happened much earlier. You make assumptions about humans farming, trading, speaking the same language etc. when the evidence available suggests that these things didn't happen at the dates we are talking about. Everything you post is based on assumptions, which more often than not are easily proved absurd. You have yet to offer a single bit of evidence on any of the topics we have discussed across either thread. Your entire belief rests on the bible being right no matter what external evidence suggests.

 

The conversation that preceeds this suggests otherwise, but if that's what you believe about me, then I believe we are done.  I will dust my feet off and move on to others.  I'm not going to get in a tangent argument with you about whether I changed my story or not.. the text is there for all to see, if someone wants to call me out on changing my story, they're free to do so... if you follow other threads I've been in, I have taken those accusations head on.  The changes you suggest I make I've made with the explanation that what was recently brought to my attention and/or what i"ve researched suggests my previous understanding was false... I did not hide the fact that I may have been wrong and even went as far to say that I have not done much homework in the past on the dating issue of this story.  You seem to have forgotten all that and just want to stick with me changing my story.  Dont' lose your credibility.  A while back I had liked how you represented yourself... you're making me question your credibility now. 

And if you're going to come back with your questioning mine, then we're done... I think you've already made your perspective clear.

 


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Jabberwocky wrote:Huh? I

Jabberwocky wrote:

Huh? I have no idea how this undermines my position. Address my point instead of simply saying that somehow I'm arguing against myself. Is point 1 true, or 2? Or some point 3 I'm missing? How and why.

You talked about belief and how either God only revealed himself to the jews or they took a lucky guess... going futher back you make statements that you believe contradict each other yet I agreed with them suggesting then the story is impossible yet you based that understanding off text and not history of conversation. 

Your point is people either took a guess and got it right (believed in other gods first possibly) or God only selected a few which means God doesn't want people to know him.

Really has nothing to do with the OP so this is the end of this right here.

First considering the Bible as a whole and how people knew God in the first place, the Egyptians are likely the decendents of a person/family or group of people who chose to walk away from God  and/or follow their own Gods and passed down that heritage... the Bible suggests that Adam and Eve knew God without a doubt.  Either they failed to tell their children or just some of their children or some of their grandchildren failed to tell or so on, but somewhere along the line, someone stopped following the Biblical God and started a tribe of non-believers... the trend just continued.

Moving on to Kings, you'll find a some of the signature kings in scripture believed in another god first. 

Considering Abraham and Moses, Moses had a heritage that He was aware of... He was brought up and raised by teh pharoahs wives and thus would have been brought up outside the Yahweh belief, yet God spoke to him.  Just as the pharoah was, I'm sure He was aware of the Jewish belief, but it's not clear whether he truly believed it before or not.

Abraham.  I cannot find anywhere in scripture that suggests Abraham knew the name of God... at least not before his name was changed.  In Genesis Chapter 14, there's a  quote from Abram saying "Lord God Most High"... LORD ususally is in place of YHWH, but in this case, there's no indication in the Hebrew that I can see of Abram using God by name... He only knew that this god he was following was thee God.. and not just another god out there. 

The point is, some human ultimately had to choose to not follow God for their children to not know Him.  Considering these particular people who you wish had a story of alternate belief, they possibly did and God revealed himself to them..  Is it because God didn't want others to know Him?  God takes care of His flock.  Others witness what happens and come to Him, but those people he came to were already a part of it. 

More of this on another thread if you'd like. 

Jabberwocky wrote:

So? If Genesis and Exodus were both passed down orally before the written word, then when Genesis was first written down, his name would have been known due to the knowledge of Exodus. If this was passed down by different people, then that hurts the reliability of the accounts even more. Hell, it could mean that they're about different gods, and the references to Genesis in Exodus were put in later just to tie the two together.

how does any of that hurt the reliability of the accounts?  Especially seeing as spoken word was considered a means of a signature up until recent centuries.  People were careful about how they portrayed stories handed down by their parents... it's nothing like today. 

The account of Genesis is actually one of the newer books of the OT and so it is written with Gods name in it though it likely wasn't known.

Jabberwocky wrote:

 

The delusion is strong here. The timeline issue was never refuted. Once you stopped arguing with Noah and his family telling everyone themselves (as you realized that circumnavigating the globe wouldn't be enough), you then implied that people would tell other people. As I've just said above, that is insufficient warning.

actually I still stand by the possibility of one family spreading the word as a possibility over 120 years... look at the math written... Considering how far people have likely spread, it was very possible... but if you don't like that understanding, and you don't it's also possible for others to spread it quicker. 

I'm assuming you're finally admitting your delusion here????

Jabberwocky wrote:

You are willing to believe things that fly in the face of science if they're mentioned in the bible. Are you willing to make the same concession for other absurd claims? What if I told you there was a lemur that could talk 3 million years ago? Because we've never found one isn't proof that it didn't exist. What say you about the lemur who talked?

I would say that lemur who talked is actually the one that put the teapot in orbit around Jupiter. 

Jabberwocky wrote:

Yeah. I guess the reasonable thing to believe is that god wanted to punish an entire species by drowning them. A god that of course created the species, including their brains. So god was mad at this species for their tendencies and what they do, which is a result of what's going on in the brains that he created. Got it. Reductio ad absurdum? Perhaps. But that's only a logical fallacy if it's missing some important information, or otherwise distorts the point. The funny part is, it's the other side that misses an important detail. If the bible is true, then god created the human brain. That would mean that our tendencies and our nature was something that god chose for our brains. If god created humans perfect to begin with, then the fall could have never happened in the first place. The entire thing stinks.

really... how does that run logic?  Let's take a look... Anyone can create something perfect.. does that mean it's going to be used for everything it's supposed to be use for? of course not.  The thing with perfection is choice is a part of it too.  God created hands so perfect that they can create almost anything we can imagine... however with human choice, those hands can also kill other humans... is that a flaw in the design or just a bad choice made by the owner. 

Then we go on to bad choices being a flaw in the construction of the brain.  Well, what is "bad"?  is that a thing we can hold or observe?  or is it merely something that someone else or soemthing else does that is contrary to the observers intentions and or liking.  I'd say it's the contrary one.  So bad choices aren't flaws, but rather contrary to Gods intentions.  That's the problem with beings who are self aware and have a choice... they think they know better than God and so choose not to take Gods guidance in making chioces... thus Gods perfect creation creates its own flaws and thus results in a flawed perspective of God. 

You may not like the story because it looks like God made the mistakes, but if you take the whole thing in logical perspective, the only blame is on the being that made the choices for themselves.


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caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Huh? I have no idea how this undermines my position. Address my point instead of simply saying that somehow I'm arguing against myself. Is point 1 true, or 2? Or some point 3 I'm missing? How and why.

You talked about belief and how either God only revealed himself to the jews or they took a lucky guess... going futher back you make statements that you believe contradict each other yet I agreed with them suggesting then the story is impossible yet you based that understanding off text and not history of conversation. 

Your point is people either took a guess and got it right (believed in other gods first possibly) or God only selected a few which means God doesn't want people to know him.

Really has nothing to do with the OP so this is the end of this right here.

First considering the Bible as a whole and how people knew God in the first place, the Egyptians are likely the decendents of a person/family or group of people who chose to walk away from God  and/or follow their own Gods and passed down that heritage... the Bible suggests that Adam and Eve knew God without a doubt.  Either they failed to tell their children or just some of their children or some of their grandchildren failed to tell or so on, but somewhere along the line, someone stopped following the Biblical God and started a tribe of non-believers... the trend just continued.

Moving on to Kings, you'll find a some of the signature kings in scripture believed in another god first. 

Considering Abraham and Moses, Moses had a heritage that He was aware of... He was brought up and raised by teh pharoahs wives and thus would have been brought up outside the Yahweh belief, yet God spoke to him.  Just as the pharoah was, I'm sure He was aware of the Jewish belief, but it's not clear whether he truly believed it before or not.

Abraham.  I cannot find anywhere in scripture that suggests Abraham knew the name of God... at least not before his name was changed.  In Genesis Chapter 14, there's a  quote from Abram saying "Lord God Most High"... LORD ususally is in place of YHWH, but in this case, there's no indication in the Hebrew that I can see of Abram using God by name... He only knew that this god he was following was thee God.. and not just another god out there. 

The point is, some human ultimately had to choose to not follow God for their children to not know Him.  Considering these particular people who you wish had a story of alternate belief, they possibly did and God revealed himself to them..  Is it because God didn't want others to know Him?  God takes care of His flock.  Others witness what happens and come to Him, but those people he came to were already a part of it. 

More of this on another thread if you'd like. 

*sigh* No need to discuss this in any thread. If salvation is dependant on belief, and a child is born into a situation where they're going to not believe in god (or at least likely to not believe in god) then god's failure to make his existence more obvious is god actively condemning those people to hell. It's that simple.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

So? If Genesis and Exodus were both passed down orally before the written word, then when Genesis was first written down, his name would have been known due to the knowledge of Exodus. If this was passed down by different people, then that hurts the reliability of the accounts even more. Hell, it could mean that they're about different gods, and the references to Genesis in Exodus were put in later just to tie the two together.

how does any of that hurt the reliability of the accounts?  Especially seeing as spoken word was considered a means of a signature up until recent centuries.  People were careful about how they portrayed stories handed down by their parents... it's nothing like today. 

The account of Genesis is actually one of the newer books of the OT and so it is written with Gods name in it though it likely wasn't known.

I guess that particular detail doesn't hurt the reliability so much. I read something wrong, my apologies.

As far as spoken word...signatures...what?? Also, what evidence do you have that people were more careful in handing down stories told to them by their parents?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

 The delusion is strong here. The timeline issue was never refuted. Once you stopped arguing with Noah and his family telling everyone themselves (as you realized that circumnavigating the globe wouldn't be enough), you then implied that people would tell other people. As I've just said above, that is insufficient warning.

actually I still stand by the possibility of one family spreading the word as a possibility over 120 years... look at the math written... Considering how far people have likely spread, it was very possible... but if you don't like that understanding, and you don't it's also possible for others to spread it quicker. 

I'm assuming you're finally admitting your delusion here????

Ok, so which is it? How did the word spread? Did 8 people cover 510 million square kilometres of earth (317 million square miles for you backwards imperial scale using folk) or did the word spread from person to person who didn't believe it anyway?

On a side note, where does it say that anyone was even warned? Isn't defending genocide fun?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

You are willing to believe things that fly in the face of science if they're mentioned in the bible. Are you willing to make the same concession for other absurd claims? What if I told you there was a lemur that could talk 3 million years ago? Because we've never found one isn't proof that it didn't exist. What say you about the lemur who talked?

I would say that lemur who talked is actually the one that put the teapot in orbit around Jupiter. 

The teapot is orbiting the sun actually, between the Earth and Mars, thank you very much.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Yeah. I guess the reasonable thing to believe is that god wanted to punish an entire species by drowning them. A god that of course created the species, including their brains. So god was mad at this species for their tendencies and what they do, which is a result of what's going on in the brains that he created. Got it. Reductio ad absurdum? Perhaps. But that's only a logical fallacy if it's missing some important information, or otherwise distorts the point. The funny part is, it's the other side that misses an important detail. If the bible is true, then god created the human brain. That would mean that our tendencies and our nature was something that god chose for our brains. If god created humans perfect to begin with, then the fall could have never happened in the first place. The entire thing stinks.

really... how does that run logic?  Let's take a look... Anyone can create something perfect.. does that mean it's going to be used for everything it's supposed to be use for? of course not.  The thing with perfection is choice is a part of it too.  God created hands so perfect that they can create almost anything we can imagine... however with human choice, those hands can also kill other humans... is that a flaw in the design or just a bad choice made by the owner. 

No we can't. We can do great things, but nothing is perfect. If someone says that the oldest buildings in the world will last forever, remember that they will only last until heat death melts the earth/them. Hands so perfect....I don't even know where to go with this. Did god create the decently laid out keyboard I'm typing on (which is adapted from a "no jamming" typewriter layout, Dvorak is actually better). No he didn't. Someone saw our hands, and created something to adapt to them. Did god create the piano? No. Same idea. Hands seem perfect because our human brains are creative to find countless uses for them (and our brains create things that humans use that are designed to fit well into our hands)

However, I will tell you this. If you're right about god creating all of this, then god created my brain. God created my hands capable of strangling someone. However, god would have made my brain incapable of ever making that decision. I have a very short list of people who I honestly detest, and I might even be frighteningly apathetic if they were to die tragically. However, I could not do the deed myself. I believe that it violates the basic most important rules by which humans should live, and someone would have to alter my state of mind likely with substances beyond anything I've ever experienced in order for me to ever make such a decision. God made my brain one that is incapable of killing. How novel. Why then make it capable of disbelief? Why make Adam and Eve's brain so gullible when snakes talk? Why make a psychopath's brain one that derives joy from the pain of others?

caposkia wrote:

Then we go on to bad choices being a flaw in the construction of the brain.  Well, what is "bad"?  is that a thing we can hold or observe?  or is it merely something that someone else or soemthing else does that is contrary to the observers intentions and or liking.  I'd say it's the contrary one.  So bad choices aren't flaws, but rather contrary to Gods intentions.  That's the problem with beings who are self aware and have a choice... they think they know better than God and so choose not to take Gods guidance in making chioces... thus Gods perfect creation creates its own flaws and thus results in a flawed perspective of God. 

You may not like the story because it looks like God made the mistakes, but if you take the whole thing in logical perspective, the only blame is on the being that made the choices for themselves.

*sigh*. Yes, the story implies that god DID make mistakes! You're almost there!

I've never designed a brain. I'm incapable of doing that. The VERY cutting edge of medical technology right now is growing organs, and the brain is a ways away from even being started I'm sure. The closest thing I've done is some very simply programming...and I mean very simple. I programmed some simple text based games for a graphing calculator, like find a number between 1 and 100 in 6 guesses, where it tells you after each guess if the answer is higher or lower. That game was incapable of calling me an idiot. I could, however, have programmed in such a feature.

Now imagine if one person were to build a computer from the ground up by themselves. All they have is the raw materials. So they get to work. Printing circuit boards, putting together processors, chips, soldering everything to the boards, etc. etc. Then, the thing begins to work, and they program the software to make the computer useful. When they're done, the computer works exactly as designed. The computer does everything that the designer wanted it to do. What do you call that? A good designer! What if, though the computer didn't work as designed? What if it had flaws, where another computer savvy user could program malicious software into it? Would you call them a bad designer? Eh....well, it depends. We are dealing with humans here, and we DO have limitations. Now, what if they programmed it so badly, that even the most computer illiterate person was able to use that computer to steal the world's banking information? Well then you'd call that designer a right idiot, wouldn't you!

According to your story, your god created two people, who were easily co-erced by a talking snake (which the moron put there too!!!), to fuck us all over forever. And you're expecting someone to say that god did a splendid job??  Please!

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


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caposkia wrote:you forget

caposkia wrote:

you forget too that the 200,000 number has changed as well. 

I haven't forgotten. You have changed the number a dozen times. The bottom line is, that none of the numbers you choose work.

 

caposkia wrote:

It ultimately does not bring light though to when the flood could have happened...

Of course not, because there is no year when the flood could have happened as described- which is my point. Earlier than 200,000 years doesn't work any better than later.

 

caposkia wrote:

Also Neanderthals could have been among those taken onto the boat...

Lol. Okay, let's play with that theory. So God doesn't consider Neanderthals to be human (since in the story NO humans other than Noah and family were on the boat). Noah puts them on the boat like the rest of the animals. That means the flood had to happen roughly 200,000 years ago or earlier (that is the point we know interbreeding started- and yes we do know). Then somehow, after the flood, the Neanderthals managed to multiply and spread out throughout all of Europe and northern Asia really quickly. Fast enough that modern Archaeology can't even tell there was a massive population change, before homo sapiens left Africa (does that mean those of us with Neanderthal DNA are not completely human? That Asians are less human than everyone else? And Africans are more human? Would God have considered a human have sex with a Neanderthal beastiality? Add in the moral question, how do you justify God exterminating not just animals, but also an intelligent, tool making, probably talking species just because he was mad at homo sapiens?) All you are doing is opening up even larger holes in the story.

 

caposkia wrote:

There's just no way of knowing... humans could have breeded with them after the flood which suggests the DNA signatures... some people could have before the flood, during the flood and others not which explains why some people don't have the signatures. 

There are ways of knowing. We have the dates that humans interbred with Neanderthals down to a range of about 100,000 years. We know all sorts of things, that you choose to be willfully ignorant doesn't change that. The point is, there is absolutely no time in history where the story of the flood, as portrayed in the bible, is a possibility. There are simply too many gaping holes in the story that have no rational explanation.

 

caposkia wrote:

In any case, it brings no light further to the date or the possibility of the flood happening or not.  If this is your ground, it's not convincing.  I need something more than Neanderthal DNA to show me this story didn't happen. 

I am convinced that a time machine so you could go back and watch Noah not build the Ark yourself wouldn't convince you. I don't think there is anything in the world that will convince you to that a story a 6 year old can tell is fantasy is completely absurd.

 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Jabberwocky wrote:*sigh* No

Jabberwocky wrote:

*sigh* No need to discuss this in any thread. If salvation is dependant on belief, and a child is born into a situation where they're going to not believe in god (or at least likely to not believe in god) then god's failure to make his existence more obvious is god actively condemning those people to hell. It's that simple.

Salvation is dependant on acceptance.  It is said that Satan 'believes".  Considering the comment about people not telling their children..  You make the assumption that throughout life then, they had no opportunity to hear the truth.  That's not how it works.  People condemn themselves to hell just like jail.. e.g. a child who is born in a house where the father is a criminal and the mother is a criminal is not necessarily going to grow up to be a criminal... granted their odds aren't great.   The thing is, if you condemn every child born into such a life like that, then you've already given up on them... that's not their fault.  This is what the whole NT is about...

Jabberwocky wrote:

I guess that particular detail doesn't hurt the reliability so much. I read something wrong, my apologies.

As far as spoken word...signatures...what?? Also, what evidence do you have that people were more careful in handing down stories told to them by their parents?

no worries, it happens. 

Considering evidence that peopel were more careful handing down stories in the ancient world.... just look up any history of any culture before documentation of stories was possible... consider the dating of most historical stories compared to when they were understood to have been written down.  Also take into consideration that the history of people is littered with storytelling. 

I looked and found it difficult to find a specific author discussing in length about oral history, but Wikipedia seems to cover the idea that it wasn't uncommon and goes through the different methods of orally transmitting a cultures history.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_tradition

Jabberwocky wrote:

Ok, so which is it? How did the word spread? Did 8 people cover 510 million square kilometres of earth (317 million square miles for you backwards imperial scale using folk) or did the word spread from person to person who didn't believe it anyway?

On a side note, where does it say that anyone was even warned? Isn't defending genocide fun?

Which is it?  I don't know for sure.   As I've mentioned way way way back when I first started this thread, most of the conversations about this story have to be based on assumption because we just don't know enough about it to say for sure. 

Let's put it this way, did they need to be warned or did they already know?  considering the timing of the culture if God is real and Genesis is true, they would have all already known that thier choices were not in favor of the God. 

Defending Genocide is fun for you?  you like cool aid?

Jabberwocky wrote:

The teapot is orbiting the sun actually, between the Earth and Mars, thank you very much.

So the monkey was WRONG!!!!!  never trust a monkey smoking weed.

Jabberwocky wrote:

No we can't. We can do great things, but nothing is perfect. If someone says that the oldest buildings in the world will last forever, remember that they will only last until heat death melts the earth/them.

so is that imperfect design or material

Jabberwocky wrote:

Hands so perfect....I don't even know where to go with this. Did god create the decently laid out keyboard I'm typing on (which is adapted from a "no jamming" typewriter layout, Dvorak is actually better). No he didn't. Someone saw our hands, and created something to adapt to them. Did god create the piano? No. Same idea. Hands seem perfect because our human brains are creative to find countless uses for them (and our brains create things that humans use that are designed to fit well into our hands)

to the contrary, they don't seem perfect, but they were designed perfectly...  the point is perfection can be tainted by those who abuse it.

Jabberwocky wrote:

However, I will tell you this. If you're right about god creating all of this, then god created my brain. God created my hands capable of strangling someone. However, god would have made my brain incapable of ever making that decision. I have a very short list of people who I honestly detest, and I might even be frighteningly apathetic if they were to die tragically. However, I could not do the deed myself. I believe that it violates the basic most important rules by which humans should live, and someone would have to alter my state of mind likely with substances beyond anything I've ever experienced in order for me to ever make such a decision. God made my brain one that is incapable of killing. How novel. Why then make it capable of disbelief? Why make Adam and Eve's brain so gullible when snakes talk? Why make a psychopath's brain one that derives joy from the pain of others?

c'mon, that's like trying to blame the person who invented the internet for its capability to solicit child porn.  God created your brain with all kinds of capabilities... to take away the capability to do bad things is to take away the capability to make a choice and to be able to be independent.  Just like with the hands, your brain and how its developed and used is the choice of those who raised you and mainly yourself. 

Jabberwocky wrote:

caposkia wrote:

You may not like the story because it looks like God made the mistakes, but if you take the whole thing in logical perspective, the only blame is on the being that made the choices for themselves.

*sigh*. Yes, the story implies that god DID make mistakes! You're almost there!

yea, cause you read that carefully... and thank you for clarifying why people misinterpret scripture. 

Jabberwocky wrote:

 The closest thing I've done is some very simply programming...and I mean very simple. I programmed some simple text based games for a graphing calculator, like find a number between 1 and 100 in 6 guesses, where it tells you after each guess if the answer is higher or lower. That game was incapable of calling me an idiot. I could, however, have programmed in such a feature.

Now imagine if one person were to build a computer from the ground up by themselves. All they have is the raw materials. So they get to work. Printing circuit boards, putting together processI've never designed a brain. I'm incapable of doing that. The VERY cutting edge of medical technology right now is growing organs, and the brain is a ways away from even being started I'm sure.ors, chips, soldering everything to the boards, etc. etc. Then, the thing begins to work, and they program the software to make the computer useful. When they're done, the computer works exactly as designed. The computer does everything that the designer wanted it to do. What do you call that? A good designer! What if, though the computer didn't work as designed? What if it had flaws, where another computer savvy user could program malicious software into it? Would you call them a bad designer? Eh....well, it depends. We are dealing with humans here, and we DO have limitations. Now, what if they programmed it so badly, that even the most computer illiterate person was able to use that computer to steal the world's banking information? Well then you'd call that designer a right idiot, wouldn't you!

According to your story, your god created two people, who were easily co-erced by a talking snake (which the moron put there too!!!), to fuck us all over forever. And you're expecting someone to say that god did a splendid job??  Please!

The problem with programming computers is one has to put everything the computer is ever going to know or be capable of into it... Brains are much much more complex as you pointed out.  All thoughts, actions, abilities, etc are not stored, but rather reconstructed each time they are used or "remembered".   Therefore, God did not put the action or programming into the brain... rather God created a supercomputer capable of observing and reconstructing so that usage and storage capabilites could be virtually endless. What that ability is used for is up to the owner, not the creator. 

God put the snake there, Lucifer posessed the snake so again you're blaming God for something someone else did... Please!


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Beyond Saving wrote:caposkia

Beyond Saving wrote:

caposkia wrote:

you forget too that the 200,000 number has changed as well. 

I haven't forgotten. You have changed the number a dozen times. The bottom line is, that none of the numbers you choose work.

So what was your case from the final number?  because it seems that nothing sound came out to oppose that.  Either way, we're taking guesses here.  I'm not the one who needed a date to prove the story true. 

Beyond Saving wrote:

caposkia wrote:

Also Neanderthals could have been among those taken onto the boat...

Lol. Okay, let's play with that theory. So God doesn't consider Neanderthals to be human (since in the story NO humans other than Noah and family were on the boat). Noah puts them on the boat like the rest of the animals. That means the flood had to happen roughly 200,000 years ago or earlier (that is the point we know interbreeding started- and yes we do know). Then somehow, after the flood, the Neanderthals managed to multiply and spread out throughout all of Europe and northern Asia really quickly. Fast enough that modern Archaeology can't even tell there was a massive population change, before homo sapiens left Africa (does that mean those of us with Neanderthal DNA are not completely human? That Asians are less human than everyone else? And Africans are more human? Would God have considered a human have sex with a Neanderthal beastiality? Add in the moral question, how do you justify God exterminating not just animals, but also an intelligent, tool making, probably talking species just because he was mad at homo sapiens?) All you are doing is opening up even larger holes in the story.

Did you read the story or are you just shooting in the dark at this point?  God regretted creating people and if you read back in Genesis, everything He created was for people, so to destroy people logically implies to destroy everything.

Beyond Saving wrote:

There are ways of knowing. We have the dates that humans interbred with Neanderthals down to a range of about 100,000 years. We know all sorts of things, that you choose to be willfully ignorant doesn't change that. The point is, there is absolutely no time in history where the story of the flood, as portrayed in the bible, is a possibility. There are simply too many gaping holes in the story that have no rational explanation.

There are gaping holes in Evolution too, but that doesn't stop most non-believing people from accepting that.... I still don't see a major issue here.  There are too many hypotheticals to conclude as you are.  Also, I will remind you that I don't base the truth of this story off of what we know of this story....

Beyond Saving wrote:

 

caposkia wrote:

In any case, it brings no light further to the date or the possibility of the flood happening or not.  If this is your ground, it's not convincing.  I need something more than Neanderthal DNA to show me this story didn't happen. 

I am convinced that a time machine so you could go back and watch Noah not build the Ark yourself wouldn't convince you. I don't think there is anything in the world that will convince you to that a story a 6 year old can tell is fantasy is completely absurd.

likewise for you to go back and watch Noah build the ark...  My thought is you'd come up with some special effects excuse or how time travel isn't possible...

 


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caposkia wrote:to the

caposkia wrote:

to the contrary, they don't seem perfect, but they were designed perfectly...  the point is perfection can be tainted by those who abuse it.

 

  How does one abuse perfection ?  Christians redefine perfection as having the capacity to become imperfect.  That contradicts what perfection should logically be.    God is perfect, and despite his free will can he act in a way that negates that perfection ?  

 

caposkia wrote:
c'mon, that's like trying to blame the person who invented the internet for its capability to solicit child porn.  God created your brain with all kinds of capabilities... to take away the capability to do bad things is to take away the capability to make a choice and to be able to be independent.  Just like with the hands, your brain and how its developed and used is the choice of those who raised you and mainly yourself. 


 

   The negative effects of free will from God's created beings ( angels or humans ) still reflects upon God's wilfull choices.  There is no way to divorce God's partial culpability by simply stating that Adam and Eve had free will so it's all on them.  

  

If you would like a real world example about free will and the chain of responsibility just think the about Coach Joe Paterno from Penn State.  It was Jerry Sandusky who diddled the little boys in the shower so why did the legal system also go after Paterno and assistant coach Mike Mcqueary ?  Wouldn't that imply that law enforcment considered them responsible as well ?

 

 


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caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

pardon me, double post. 


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caposkia wrote:Jabberwocky

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

*sigh* No need to discuss this in any thread. If salvation is dependant on belief, and a child is born into a situation where they're going to not believe in god (or at least likely to not believe in god) then god's failure to make his existence more obvious is god actively condemning those people to hell. It's that simple.

Salvation is dependant on acceptance.  It is said that Satan 'believes".  Considering the comment about people not telling their children..  You make the assumption that throughout life then, they had no opportunity to hear the truth.  That's not how it works.  People condemn themselves to hell just like jail.. e.g. a child who is born in a house where the father is a criminal and the mother is a criminal is not necessarily going to grow up to be a criminal... granted their odds aren't great.   The thing is, if you condemn every child born into such a life like that, then you've already given up on them... that's not their fault.  This is what the whole NT is about...

Terrible argument. I've had every opportunity to "hear the truth" but considering all the information surrounding me, the conclusion I have come to is that it's all bullshit. People condemn themselves to hell like jail? I'm sorry, but even those who end up in prison (other than the wrongly accused) know why they're there. Considering the multiplicity of religions in the world, it's a lot more complicated. If, for example, somebody somehow convinced the populace that marijuana was now legal (and you don't already live in Colorado or Washington state), and then all of a sudden a huge pile of people began smoking it, the government would probably find out what had happened, and not have prosecuted these people due to the discovery of the misinformation being spread (and if that didn't happen, everyone would feel that that is indeed what should have happened). According to your reality, Christianity is true, and the most important law (indeed the ONLY important law) that there is, given that my next 50 years aren't as important as the next million after that if they're real, let alone the 209809284012840298492094580258409234850239850932850932850925985890...^56 years after that. So while Christianity is still the most followed religion on Earth, its influence is declining, especially in more educated parts of the world (even in the USA to my understanding, although more slowly than elsewhere). According to you, if Christianity is the most important law in the world, your head of state is doing absolutely nothing in order to help mitigate the spread of these other false laws. 

So if you condemn those children into that life, you've already given up on them? Ok. So every single hindu that lived before the idea of Judaism spread to India, or before it even existed, is condemned because god decided not to show up until later (and nowhere near the Hindus)? No idea where you were going with this argument. If anyone can be accused of this, it is your god. 

Also, the new testament is not about what I was discussing. The new testament is an attempt at a conclusion to the old. The old testament is a messianic religion, and the practitioners of orthodox judaism continue to believe that a messiah will come, and may even be one of their kids (but I do believe it's limited to sons...sorry girls!). The new testament posits that this messiah has come, and simultaneously has rendered animal sacrifices superfluous. Also, it created a blissful (although horrendous sounding in practice) after life, and a horrendous one as well. No idea what that has to do with the topic at hand.

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

I guess that particular detail doesn't hurt the reliability so much. I read something wrong, my apologies.

As far as spoken word...signatures...what?? Also, what evidence do you have that people were more careful in handing down stories told to them by their parents?

no worries, it happens. 

Considering evidence that peopel were more careful handing down stories in the ancient world.... just look up any history of any culture before documentation of stories was possible... consider the dating of most historical stories compared to when they were understood to have been written down.  Also take into consideration that the history of people is littered with storytelling. 

I looked and found it difficult to find a specific author discussing in length about oral history, but Wikipedia seems to cover the idea that it wasn't uncommon and goes through the different methods of orally transmitting a cultures history.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_tradition

BS. Sorry. There is no evidence to support that people were more careful in oral passing down of stories. How would you verify that? Considering we can't examine the evidence until the advent of the written word, this is something we are unable to investigate. You have asserted something claiming that there is evidence for it when such a proposition is not in the realm of the possible. That's not merely a mistake, that is blatant dishonesty. Dishonesty in the name of god. It's a common theme (and not just with you).

Where is the suggestion in that article that history was passed down more accurate orally before the advent of the written word?

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Ok, so which is it? How did the word spread? Did 8 people cover 510 million square kilometres of earth (317 million square miles for you backwards imperial scale using folk) or did the word spread from person to person who didn't believe it anyway?

On a side note, where does it say that anyone was even warned? Isn't defending genocide fun?

Which is it?  I don't know for sure.   As I've mentioned way way way back when I first started this thread, most of the conversations about this story have to be based on assumption because we just don't know enough about it to say for sure. 

I have to remind us all that this whole line of questioning began when you got trapped on the question of when the flood occurred. Did it occur before people had the language to convey the imminent disaster (which would be impossible) or did it occur after (at which point people were spread out more or less around the entire globe, which would deem it impossible by any rational means as well)? You have gone with option two, since you are no longer answering my question by saying that it occurred before people were that far spread out. Let the records show that you have made a decision on this matter (finally!). And your answer is, "I don't know for sure". Rather than actually tackle the content of my argument, or say something to show that my argument is invalid, you have once again attempted to evade the entire question! You chose the latter choice at the beginning of this paragraph, and then avoided confronting the two possibilities that would logically follow were that the case. I want you to answer that question. You finally answered the previous this or that" question, so where do you go with this? You either could explain to me how could this news have possibly effectively spread considering the points I brought up, or you could bring up something that negates my points, and the next part of your post following is not sufficient. It is a "because god" argument. Once you've been backed into a corner so hard, you simply resort to supernatural causes. Not good enough. 

caposkia wrote:

Let's put it this way, did they need to be warned or did they already know?  considering the timing of the culture if God is real and Genesis is true, they would have all already known that thier choices were not in favor of the God. 

Defending Genocide is fun for you?  you like cool aid?

Once again, if they knew....terrible argument. There exist in this world serial killers. Do some get caught on purpose? Or do some not care whether or not they get caught? Sure! However, some do care. Take the DC area snipers a few years back. They knew what they were doing, and they knew the consequences of getting caught. That's why they were shooting through a hole in a car rather than out in the open. However, if these people already KNEW that there was an omnipotent god about to dish out imminent world-wide sweeping justice, even the shittiest people on Earth would know they should should shape up. This, however, didn't happen. God was effective in convincing Noah and his family of these issues, but was not effective in convincing anyone else. The possibilites are now 3

1. 510 million sq. km of earth covered on foot

2. People told the story even not believing them, and just the word itself going from ear to ear was enough for god's satisfaction that the word was spread around in an ample fashion, or

3. God spread the word himself, but his omnipotence wasn't enough to convince anyone, his omniscience wasn't enough to know what to say to convince anyone, and his omnibenevolence wasn't strong enough to stop himself from DROWNING EVERYONE!!

Ridiculous. Also, you have to have detected the sarcasm on that last one. Especially since you're the one defending genocide here, not me. 

To be thorough in addressing your points, I prefer juice over kool-aid. 

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

The teapot is orbiting the sun actually, between the Earth and Mars, thank you very much.

So the monkey was WRONG!!!!!  never trust a monkey smoking weed.

No clue where a monkey comes in. I was just pointing out that you got Russel's teapot wrong. No big deal, his argument is effective if the teapot orbits Jupiter too. 

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

No we can't. We can do great things, but nothing is perfect. If someone says that the oldest buildings in the world will last forever, remember that they will only last until heat death melts the earth/them.

so is that imperfect design or material

You said that anyone can create something perfect. I just showed that they can't. If the material is the flaw (and as I think you believe, god designed the material) then guess who else can't create something perfect?)

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

Hands so perfect....I don't even know where to go with this. Did god create the decently laid out keyboard I'm typing on (which is adapted from a "no jamming" typewriter layout, Dvorak is actually better). No he didn't. Someone saw our hands, and created something to adapt to them. Did god create the piano? No. Same idea. Hands seem perfect because our human brains are creative to find countless uses for them (and our brains create things that humans use that are designed to fit well into our hands)

to the contrary, they don't seem perfect, but they were designed perfectly...  the point is perfection can be tainted by those who abuse it.

"they were designed perfectly" is an assertion. Nothing more. Unless you provide evidence , the point is moot. I will say that the ring finger is nothing but a pain when playing a piano. 

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

However, I will tell you this. If you're right about god creating all of this, then god created my brain. God created my hands capable of strangling someone. However, god would have made my brain incapable of ever making that decision. I have a very short list of people who I honestly detest, and I might even be frighteningly apathetic if they were to die tragically. However, I could not do the deed myself. I believe that it violates the basic most important rules by which humans should live, and someone would have to alter my state of mind likely with substances beyond anything I've ever experienced in order for me to ever make such a decision. God made my brain one that is incapable of killing. How novel. Why then make it capable of disbelief? Why make Adam and Eve's brain so gullible when snakes talk? Why make a psychopath's brain one that derives joy from the pain of others?

c'mon, that's like trying to blame the person who invented the internet for its capability to solicit child porn.  God created your brain with all kinds of capabilities... to take away the capability to do bad things is to take away the capability to make a choice and to be able to be independent.  Just like with the hands, your brain and how its developed and used is the choice of those who raised you and mainly yourself. 

No it's not like that at all. People don't claim to be omnipotent and omniscient. People do claim that god possesses these attributes, and as a result would know in advance everything a human brain would ever become capable of, and would also know what tweaks would be necessary going in in order to avoid any evil. Also, if your analogy on the internet is to be fair, the internet (people) was created by a person or some people (a god or gods) and was then expanded on, and worked on, revised, built up, etc. etc. by countless other people (gods). Hence your analogy falls apart unless you leave room for these other gods. 

caposkia wrote:

Jabberwocky wrote:

caposkia wrote:

You may not like the story because it looks like God made the mistakes, but if you take the whole thing in logical perspective, the only blame is on the being that made the choices for themselves.

*sigh*. Yes, the story implies that god DID make mistakes! You're almost there!

yea, cause you read that carefully... and thank you for clarifying why people misinterpret scripture. 

You have a short memory. Of course this particular post in a vacuum may cause you to miss that I was joking, but I explain it in other parts of the post adjacent to it. 

[quo

Jabberwocky wrote:

I've never designed a brain. I'm incapable of doing that. The VERY cutting edge of medical technology right now is growing organs, and the brain is a ways away from even being started I'm sure. The closest thing I've done is some very simply programming...and I mean very simple. I programmed some simple text based games for a graphing calculator, like find a number between 1 and 100 in 6 guesses, where it tells you after each guess if the answer is higher or lower. That game was incapable of calling me an idiot. I could, however, have programmed in such a feature.

Now imagine if one person were to build a computer from the ground up by themselves. All they have is the raw materials. So they get to work. Printing circuit boards, putting together processors, chips, soldering everything to the boards, etc. etc. Then, the thing begins to work, and they program the software to make the computer useful. When they're done, the computer works exactly as designed. The computer does everything that the designer wanted it to do. What do you call that? A good designer! What if, though the computer didn't work as designed? What if it had flaws, where another computer savvy user could program malicious software into it? Would you call them a bad designer? Eh....well, it depends. We are dealing with humans here, and we DO have limitations. Now, what if they programmed it so badly, that even the most computer illiterate person was able to use that computer to steal the world's banking information? Well then you'd call that designer a right idiot, wouldn't you!

According to your story, your god created two people, who were easily co-erced by a talking snake (which the moron put there too!!!), to fuck us all over forever. And you're expecting someone to say that god did a splendid job??  Please!

The problem with programming computers is one has to put everything the computer is ever going to know or be capable of into it... Brains are much much more complex as you pointed out.  All thoughts, actions, abilities, etc are not stored, but rather reconstructed each time they are used or "remembered".   Therefore, God did not put the action or programming into the brain... rather God created a supercomputer capable of observing and reconstructing so that usage and storage capabilites could be virtually endless. What that ability is used for is up to the owner, not the creator.

We are able to program computers to learn in some capacity. Not nearly as advanced as our brains, but we are. We can get them to recognize patterns, and this technology gets better all the time. God didn't just say "Here humans! Limitless meat-computer in your skull!" We know this because our brain does have limitations. So instead of creating useful limiations, god would have created ones that are detrimental instead. 

caposkia wrote:

God put the snake there, Lucifer posessed the snake so again you're blaming God for something someone else did... Please!

Ok at this point I'm having trouble believing that you might even be slightly serious. You actually believe that that event occurred? Even if I were to entertain it as a possiblity, the bible seems to imply that Adam and Eve had only talked amonst themselves and to god until that point. Talking animals were not mentioned before the serpent. No note is made of Eve being puzzled that all of a sudden some animal can talk. Also, god did not at any point in the narrative warn Adam and Eve that they are not to trust any animals that suddenly begin to talk. Having only ever talked to Adam and god, Eve would have been in a position to be trusting to a level we would consider foolish, through no fault of her own. Is a parent a criminal if their child trusts a stranger and gets kidnapped, because the parent didn't warn their child not to get into a stranger's car? No the parent is not a criminal. It is a simple thing that no parent should neglect to teach their children though. However, if there are news reports that the parents watched, and letters home from school that the parents received and read about such a character, yet still didn't address the issue with their child, would that be worse? Yes. Yes it would. It still wouldn't be the parents' crime, but it would certainly be a crime that the parents should have contributred in preventing. Your god knew that lucifer was real, and must have known that he had the ability to possess snakes, and the cunning personality to convince people to do something apparently evil (like eat some fruit). With all this knowledge, your god did nothing. You may say that god told them not to eat of the fruit, but he did not tell them not to listen to talking animals or any odd premonitions they have. They were ill-prepared, and it was a result of shitty parenting. 

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


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 Wow, this thread got

 Wow, this thread got popular in my absence! anyone care to paraphrase what's been going on?


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GodsUseForAMosquito wrote:

 Wow, this thread got popular in my absence! anyone care to paraphrase what's been going on?

Cap attempted to solve the numerous problems with the story of Noah's Ark by claiming that it must have happened over 200,000 years ago, at which point I called bullshit, pointing out that things like wine which is featured in the story, had not been invented. Several hundred posts later, Cap has claimed that Noah's Ark happened sometime between 10,000 years ago and 4 million years ago depending upon which problem he is presented with. To date, Cap has not provided a single shred of evidence, and has clung on to the story being true. Me and Jabberwocky have been shooting down his absurd claims left and right for the last 200 or so posts. Ranging from the idea that Noah and his family walked around the entire world and personally warned everyone about the flood, to Noah getting drunk off of eating rotten grapes since wine hadn't been invented yet. Recently, we have gotten into discussing the genetic inconsistencies with the story since some people are descendents of neanderthals and others are not and how such a thing could be possible if we are all descendants of Noah as the story claims. Cap has displayed a knowledge of genetics which is consistent with what you would expect from a theist. 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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caposkia wrote:So what was

caposkia wrote:

So what was your case from the final number?  because it seems that nothing sound came out to oppose that.  Either way, we're taking guesses here.  I'm not the one who needed a date to prove the story true. 

I don't believe it happened at all. Yes, you are the one who needs to come up with a date or range of dates where it could have happened, since you are the one claiming that it DID happen.

 

caposkia wrote:

 

Did you read the story or are you just shooting in the dark at this point?  God regretted creating people and if you read back in Genesis, everything He created was for people, so to destroy people logically implies to destroy everything.

So God created neanderthals for homo sapiens? Did he create dinosaurs for homo sapiens too? Why did God create so much for people that wouldn't exist by the time he created people? That is like getting a present for an unborn baby and destroying it before the baby is born.

 

 

 

 

 

caposkia wrote:

There are gaping holes in Evolution too, but that doesn't stop most non-believing people from accepting that....

Name one. 

 

 

 

caposkia wrote:

I still don't see a major issue here.  There are too many hypotheticals to conclude as you are.  Also, I will remind you that I don't base the truth of this story off of what we know of this story....

What do you base it in? It certainly isn't evidence that the story is true, because you have absolutely none of that. 

 

 

caposkia wrote:

likewise for you to go back and watch Noah build the ark...  My thought is you'd come up with some special effects excuse or how time travel isn't possible...

On the contrary, if you could provide evidence that a man did build a gigantic boat and loaded it full of animals I would believe it, just like I believe the Egyptians built the pyramids, which was a very impressive feat in their days. I don't believe because there is absolutely no evidence that it ever happened. Naturally, if someone claimed to have a working time machine I would be highly skeptical. It would take a significant amount of evidence to prove to me that it was in fact a working time machine, however, when things are real it is easy to provide massive amounts of evidence. 

 

 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Bonus responsecaposkia

Bonus response

caposkia wrote:

There are gaping holes in Evolution too,

No. There are not! I can't be nice about this. Here, you are either lying, someone has failed to do a good job of teaching you about evolution, or you are simply too stupid (or deluded) to grasp it. 

There are gaps in the fossil record, but to point to those is much like saying that since there are gaps between my home and place of work, then you can't conclude that I used the roads or sidewalks to arrive there. 

The DNA evidence alone is enough to show us that the theory is bulletproof, unless a finding is uncovered that actually proves it false (as said by J.B.S. Haldane, "rabbits in the pre-cambrian" is done. No such finding has EVER been found).

We can measure the rate of DNA change between yourself and your parents, and everyone else, and from that figure out the rate of change that is possible, and also the rate of change that is the most common. There is no animal that has ever been found with a DNA sequence that has puzzled biologists. All of it shows that it would have come from a common ancestor. Because of that, we could compare the DNA of any two creatures (or plants, or bacteria even) on Earth, and provide an estimate as to how many generations ago the common ancestor existed. Obviously that's with a bigger margin of error the more different the organisms are to each other.

If you have trouble believing that we descended from other primates with no help from a supernatural being:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human)

^^.....see wiki...and don't ever say that there are gaping holes in the unifying theory of all biology before you know anything CLOSE to enough about it to utter such a statement. Kenneth Miller (a Catholic believe it or not) said about the above something along the lines of "I believe in a creator, but not a deceptive one". He accepts (with no issue...and in fact insists) that this simply happened, and did NOT require any outside help. 

 

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


iwbiek
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Jabberwocky wrote:and don't

Jabberwocky wrote:
and don't ever say that there are gaping holes in the unifying theory of all biology before you know anything CLOSE to enough about it to utter such a statement.



THANK YOU for this sentiment. the ignorant making hasty judgments based on tired truisms and sloppy reading of sloppily written third- or fourth-hand sources unfortunately does not exist only in the realm of scientific debate.

"I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright. . . . Or maybe 'stupid' is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. . . . And I have learned to live, as it were, with the idea that I will never find peace and happiness, either. But as long as I know there's a pretty good chance I can get my hands on either one of them every once in a while, I do the best I can between high spots."
--Hunter S. Thompson


Jabberwocky
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iwbiek wrote:Jabberwocky

iwbiek wrote:
Jabberwocky wrote:
and don't ever say that there are gaping holes in the unifying theory of all biology before you know anything CLOSE to enough about it to utter such a statement.

THANK YOU for this sentiment. the ignorant making hasty judgments based on tired truisms and sloppy reading of sloppily written third- or fourth-hand sources unfortunately does not exist only in the realm of scientific debate.

I also quite like how this poster doesn't seem to be a young earth creationist, willing to concede that the flood wasn't world-wide in some points (yet arguing with me as if it WERE world-wide) and that the earth is older than 6018 years old, but the idea that evolution occurred (without the need for supernatural assistance) is still such a bothersome concept for them. There is often a problem with people conflating atheism with evolution. While that's a false dichotomy, I have to say that young earthers are right about one thing; if evolution is true (which it of course is), Christian theology makes no sense. If we evolved from other primates, if we interbred with other homosapiens such as the neanderthals, (both points are true), then it just, doesn't, work!

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.