Here’s an information dump of interesting tidbits that have popped up recently …
— Station WLRN out of Miami doesn’t seem too sure that Florida is on board with the national Next Generation Science Standards, especially as they apply to the teaching of climate change. Florida Not Among States Expected To Teach Students About Climate Change:
More than two dozen states are expected to adopt new national science education standards that include teaching children as young as elementary school about the effects of climate change. Florida was not among the 26 states that helped to “provide leadership” during the development stage of the Next Generation Science Standards, and it is unclear if it is among the roughly 15 states “that have indicated they may accept them,” according to Inside Climate News.
— The Liberty Council has had their fingers in past evolution/creationism conflicts, and now their influence is possibly growing with a new merger. Liberty Council merges with Florida Faith & Works registry:
Maitland-based Liberty Counsel, best known for it law suits to protect religion in the public schools and opposition to gay rights, is merging with the Florida Faith & Works Coalition, a 600-member registry of pastors and volunteers committed to keeping America a Christian nation.
The merger gives Liberty Council a database network of “Christian Bible Believing Pastors†throughout Florida.
Link to Liberty Councel and link to Florida Faith & Works.
— Hidden Ark: 500-Foot Noah’s Ark Replica Zoo Being Built Near Miami:
Noah’s Ark — without all the flood and calamity — is coming to Miami.
A group of four friends behind an unusual Biblical-themed zoo under construction in Hialeah hope to raise environmental awareness by building it almost to the exact specifications of its Old Testament inspiration: 500 feet long, shaped like a boat, and made out of wood.
— Here’s an article about Liberty University growing online (including Florida students). Virginia’s Liberty emerging as evangelical giant:
The small Baptist college that television preacher Jerry Falwell founded here in 1971 has capitalized on the online education boom to become an evangelical mega-university with global reach.
In the almost six years since Falwell’s death, Liberty University has doubled its student head count — twice.
…
“We want to relate all of our subjects back to Scripture, theology and a biblical worldview,” he said. But Tinsley said students use textbooks that would be found in secular universities. In certain situations in an Earth science course, for example, a student would learn the case for biblical creation alongside the science of evolution.
“We try to present full arguments on both sides and then allow the student to make a decision,” Tinsley said. He added, “I’ve had many students over the years who have held to an evolutionary standpoint and gotten A’s.”
… building it almost to the exact specifications of its Old Testament inspiration: 500 feet long, shaped like a boat, and made out of wood.
I would be amazed – and frightened – if the Ark as described could be constructed under building codes anywhere in this state, but particularly near the coast. (And as described in Genesis, the thing was a big box – the boat-shaped pictures are illustrators’ attempts to make the whole thing plausible to their viewers…)
… students use textbooks that would be found in secular universities. In certain situations in an Earth science course, for example, a student would learn the case for biblical creation alongside the science of evolution.
Wotthehell “secular universities” use such books?!?
But the larger point is well taken: Jerry Falwell Jr is a much sharper money man than was his late unlamented daddy, and is taking full advantage of sloppily written student aid programs. According to one report at least a year ago, Liberty U annually takes in over $500M in taxpayer funds through its online components, and is dramatically expanding its physical campus as well.
“I would be amazed – and frightened – if the Ark as described could be constructed under building codes anywhere in this state, but particularly near the coast.”
I would doubt any ship would match up to Florida’s residential or commercial construction building code. In high water the craft might just float away.
“I would doubt any ship would match up to Florida’s residential or commercial construction building code. In high water the craft might just float away.”
Don’t worry Chris, the Ark could have never floated anyway, it would have broken in half under the strain. Funny how your invisible sky god couldn’t have figured that one out,perhaps he/she/it needs to take a few math and science classes,just like you.
“Don’t worry Chris, the Ark could have never floated anyway, it would have broken in half under the strain.”
By your comments we can assume you have the entire construction layout of this boat with all of it’s external and internal components? Having this working knowledge of all the systems aboard along with the conditions the ship would encounter you have determined the boat would break in half. Could you post this information. Thanks
The largest wooden ships built in actual history, rather than in mythology, have all been much shorter than the Ark, and needed to be reinforced with iron banding on the interior (unavailable to Noah) to keep them together. Long ships warp and bend with the waves, causing their boards pull apart and the ships to continually take on water. The iron banding is required to hold the ships together, and still they require someone to continually man pumps to keep the interior from flooding, even when the seas are calm. Noah lacked the technology for either.
You expect us to believe that a much larger boat, without any advanced technology to make efficient pumps or metalworking to make massive bands, survived on seas through a storm more violent than ones that have sunk much smaller vessels? The concept is blatantly preposterous and anti-physics.
On top of which, you have the concept of running the largest, most complicated zoo in history, on a boat, in the middle of the most horrible storm in history, with, what, eight people maximum? Please try to find a large zoo today that is staffed by only eight people.
Of course, the basic concept is preposterous and stupid. It can’t possibly work, for one thing. The world would have been ruined for millenniums afterwards, with the ground poisoned with oceanic salts, and not a functioning ecosystem in sight. But even pretending that isn’t a problem, what about all the animals that require old-growth forests to live in? What were they supposed to do, wait a few hundred years for the forests to recover and get old again? Okay, you can claim that god could miracle the forests back into existence, but that just makes the whole ark story stupider. If god can miracle survival for the plants, what was the point of the ark to begin with? Just miracle the animals to survive, too! Or, better yet, don’t send a stupid flood! You’re God, you’re omnipotent! Just zap away the people who are offending you. No need to screw up the ecosystems or make Noah build a useless ark that would sink anyway.
It doesn’t matter where you look at it, the ark story makes no sense. There are dragonfly species we cannot keep in captivity today, because for all of our technology, we simply cannot keep their environments stable to their specifications. Was Noah able to keep them when we can’t, on bronze age tech?
What about marine animals? Almost none of them could have survived the flood, the massive amount of debris from the land would have choked the waters, buried the corals, and left the oceans a diseased soup devoid of life higher than protists, and most of the protists would be extinct, too!
What about Indian Pipe? They are a neat group of plants that lack chlorophyll. They live in a symbiotic relationship with certain types of fungi. The fungi live in a symbiotic relationship with pine forests. Indian pipe seeds can’t stand immersion in salt water. With the pine forests dead and the land sterilized of fungi, even ignoring the salt inundation, it would take centuries for the ecosystems to get back to where the Indian pipe could survive. How did they?
What about all the parasites? Smallpox requires a population of uninfected humans to survive. Once you get it once, you’re immune, and it doesn’t survive long in the environment. Eight people? Even assuming one was sick with smallpox and all the women were pregnant getting off the ark, that’s a total of, what, 12 people, all of whom would get smallpox quickly and then either die or be immune. And the smallpox virus has to wait around 9 months for any more people to show up… ooops, smallpox went extinct during the flood, all those people who died of it later must have been psychosomatic cases! Meanwhile, all the diseases that infect humans must have infected every human on the ark. So, a population of eight people kept the largest zoo in history while every one of them was terribly sick. Impressive stuff!
Nothing about the ark story makes an ounce of sense. Nothing.
Thank you Michael,great response. I would only add that in the last couple of centuries some large wooden boats have been built (none as big as Noah’s Ark) One of the largest ever wooden boats, Baron of Renfrew (1825) at just over 300 ft long BROKE APART on it’s maiden voyage. It is considered by engineers, folly to build a cargo ship with a timber hull longer than 300 ft, since it would not be sufficiently rigid from bow to stern to avoid breaking up on the ocean’s waves.
Cue Chris to reply with one of his bullcrap rantings, regurgitated from AIG or some other looney creationist – lying for Jesus web site.
Michael
Based on today’s knowledge and the construction methods we are familiar with I’d say you points are valid. However we’re not talking about lumber from Home Depot, Simpson hurricane straps or todays construction methods. The fact is, other than what is recorded, you and I have no idea what materials or knowledge existed at the time. The basic description in scripture only gives the overall dimensions of hight and the length being six times the width which would be undesirable for a ocean going vessel. The configuration of the ark would provide far better stability as an unpowered craft. The boat was designed to float not travel. It appears the ark was well designed for its purpose.
You salt water problem is a faulty assumption. It’s no secret that salts in ground water are leaching into the oceans and the ocean’s salt content is increasing. It is reasonable to assume that 4000 years ago there may have been very little salt in the ocean. It’s also reasonable to assume that given a few million years of salt accumulation we might have a very large Dead Sea.
“What about marine animals?” The event must have been catastrophic, and there is evidence of the flood all over the world. But marine animals live in water, people don’t. So no doubt, many marine species survived.
Your way of track with the idea man has brought every human disease with him from the ancient past. In the beginning before sin ‘man’ was made very good. According to scripture we aren’t evolving by chance into a perfect creature, but rather degenerating from a perfect condition as a result of sin, a fallen race separated from our creator and his life renewing power. This separation exposes our temporary fiscal body to an every growing number to threats and diseases.
Quite a bit of research and discovery has show that Noah’s Ark and the flood are real historical events. The pre-flood world as it is described in scripture was quite different from what we see today, none of which would fit into the theoretical evolutionary model. I can understand your dismay. Suggesting that the average evolutionist or humanist could properly evaluate the plausibility and capabilities of the Ark with the overshadowing flood of bias and atheist propaganda, it does seem doubtful that one could accurately process the information. So to me your evaluation of the subject is true to form. “Nothing about the ark story makes an ounce of sense. Nothing.”
Ivorygirl
I see you have no information, only psychobabble.
Chris
It doesn’t matter how you try to rationalize the story of the ark; every attempt produces such ludicrous physics issues that even high school physics students can see the problems.
This brings up the mental issues that you have; including every one of your ID / Creationist leaders. None of them (including you) have a science education that would pass 8th grade science; and all of you don’t seem to notice. Physics, chemistry, biology? Forget it; you just don’t give a damn.
All one has to do to verify this is look at the websites such as AiG, Uncommonly Dense, or the ICR. They, like you, simply make up crap as they go. Every “theory†of ID/creationism is founded on fundamental misconceptions and misrepresentations of science at even the most elementary level. None of your god bot denizens on those sites wants to know anything about science because they apparently think that, by remaining ignorant of the science, all their pseudoscientific, babble infested arguments are valid alternatives.
“Prove me wrong,†you taunt; knowing full well that no scientific argument can possibly do that because you simply assert that scientists are wrong and don’t understand science. By not knowing any science, all scientific evidence and theory are simply opinions to you and you want to keep it that way. The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it, forget scientific methodology. You’re ignorance is breath taking.
On your first paragraph, you seem to be presuming that technology gets worse over time. Seriously? We do know what materials and techniques Noah would have used: worse ones than we have now. If you seriously believe that Noah had advanced knowledge of ship-building unavailable to the master ship builders of the 1800’s who had millenniums of ship-building traditions to rely on, there’s really nothing to say, you’re simply deluded.
Besides, this is very simple physics. Waves travel along the length of the boat. This means that boards will be alternately compressed and pulled apart. When pulled apart, water will leak in. This is very simple physics and simply undeniable. In a large ship, the water seeps in faster than it can evaporate out, causing water to build up. Thus, the ship takes on water. Again, basic physics. That assuming you can even keep it structurally sound to begin with, which is impossible without metal banding, and, reminder, Noah lived in the bronze age. Bronze is entirely unsuitable for holding a ship together.
Really, you’ve offered nothing here but wishful thinking.
So, you say salt in the ground is leaching into the oceans, and the old oceans weren’t very salty because, presumably, the ground was much saltier. Well, congratulations, you have shown that the flood wouldn’t have made the ground unlivable, because your argument demands that the ground was already unlivable! Brilliant! You have successfully debunked the entire genesis nonsense. Pat yourself on the back!
The claim that the oceans are getting saltier consistently over time is a common creationist canard, and false. If you look at the suspended chemicals in the oceans, you can see that all of them are varying over time, in different directions at different rates. Like all ecosystems, the oceans are dynamic, not the simplistic system you pretend exists.
No, marine animals would not have survived the flood. Marine animals do not live in “water”, some sort of generic concept. The ocean is full of different ecosystems, and each animal is adapted to it’s own systems. The flood would have dumped debris by the multiton into the oceans, killing all filter feeders, burying all corals and algal forests. All of those organic lifeforms would have died, and the resulting decay would have created conditions worse than the worst modern red tide. The saprophytes (decay microbes) would have sucked all the oxygen out of the water (just like they do in a modern pond when something large falls in it and dies), killing everything with gills on a global scale. End of everything, right there.
You completely fail to understand diseases. Diseases aren’t degenerate organisms. They are highly advanced, highly adapted species that live in particular ecosystems. It’s just that their ecosystems they are adapted to happen to be us! Do you think that degeneration can produce a disease capable of fooling our highly advanced immune systems? Yellow fever protozoa rearrange their DNA regularly, to keep their surface coat of proteins variable, so that our white blood cells can never figure out what their enemy looks like. Does that sound like a degenerate organism to you? Or does that sound like a highly complex system? I suppose you could claim that all diseases evolved these advanced features after the flood, but you’re the one who doesn’t believe evolution can produce advanced stuff so I guess you’re stuck! Besides, all those fossil animals show signs of diseases, so diseases were really common at the time of the flood, according to your own logic.
No, research has not shown that the flood was a real event. The story is preposterous. I notice you didn’t even bother finding a large zoo run by only 8 people today, or trying to explain how old-growth ecosystems recovered, or about species that cannot be kept with our modern technology, or why God needed a ship to begin with. Funny that.
According to the San Diego Zoo’s 2009 financial statement, 1440 of their employees belong to a labor union, accounting for 65% of their total employees. In other words, the zoo employs approximately 2200 people! I’m shocked that it employs so many, but it certainly makes running a much larger zoo, with no advanced technology, on a boat, in the middle of the most violent storm in history, with only 8 people, who are sick with every disease known to man and all the unknown ones that have gone extinct since then, quite, quite preposterous.
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/disclaimers/financial_report_2009.pdf
Chris,
I’m not a trained theologian but talking to many Christian pastors /preachers over the years most of them consider the story of Noah to be allegorical. They say the story is to depict faith, (Noah lived in a desert, never seen rain) obedience to God, (Noah never questioned Gods requests) and was rewarded for his trust in God’s word. The story was never meant to be taken literally. I think this is a much more plausible answer than trying to prove and justify an obviously fictitious story.
Jonathan
Thanks for your thoughts, I certainly respect your opinion. I don’t consider myself a theologian either, but I have been reading the book for 38 years.
I realize there are pastors and those who claim to be Christians who consider the story of Noah to be allegorical along with the six day creation. Some even doubt Christ’s literal resurrection from the dead. Jesus refers to the flood as a real event, “Matthew 24:36-41 37Â As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38Â For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39Â and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40Â Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41Â Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.”
It all sounds pretty fishy to me. If you don’t want to believe it, thats fine, but why would anyone choose or claim to be a Christian and completely reject the foundational bulk of the book. Thats like an evolutionist not accepting change over time.
The flood is only spoken of as a real historical event throughout the Bible. Here are the biblical references to the flood. Genesis 6:17, 7:7, 7:11, 9:11, 9:15, 10:1, 10:32, Isaiah 54:9, Matthew 24:37-24:42, Luke 17:26-17:27, Hebrews 11:7, I Peter 3:20, II Peter 2:5, 3:3, 3:6.
Michael
I think the main problem with your reasoning is trying to equate todays environment with the pre-flood world. Whether you do or don’t believe the biblical account is a completely different issue.
You’re missing a very important point. Noah may not have know how to build the ark nor would he have had to. The man of Noah’s day may have had less knowledge but the thought of less intelligence is ridiculous. There is no doubt mans has made large technological advances. I’m sure you would agree it has taken thousands of years of invention upon invention to produce the first automobile. But today, globally, nearly two cars are produced every second. The difference between the first vehicle and the millions produced today is shared knowledge. God had the knowledge, Noah just followed instructions.
As for our salt talk you might want to contact the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration and tell em they’ve got it all wrong.
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/riversnotsalty.html
This is the first time I’ve heard that all marine animals would die in the flood. That’s a good one. Your assumptions don’t fit anywhere close to the rising and receding water of Genesis.
You might find National Geographics Robert Ballard interesting.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/10/evidence-noahs-flood-ark-real-robert-ballard-archeologist-titanic_n_2273143.html
Ivorygirl
All I can think of is what are you smoking.
Regarding the flood being spoken of as literal in the rest of the Bible, so? Once you accept that the Bible was written by humans about God, not by God about humans, it’s no big deal.
Fun fact: The only bit of Christian scripture that actually claims to be divinely inspired is 2nd Esdras. You won’t find that in the Bible, because the Catholics decided it was non-canon and relegated it to the Apocrypha. The irony here has always rather amused me. (Well, there’s the Book of the Mormon, but…)
In order to believe that “the” Bible is a divine document, you have to accept that thousands of purported scripture documents were composed, some of whom had divine protection and some didn’t, and that protection applied across hundreds of generations, across shifting languages, changing cultures, somehow keeping the meaning intact, but God didn’t actually give anyone any way to tell real scripture from fake scripture, and people kept bungling about in the dark for millenniums, creating lists of “This is real scripture! That isn’t!”, all of them getting it dead wrong, until all of a sudden the one sect that decided on YOUR approved version of the Bible suddenly had actual divine inspiration, got it right, which didn’t stop hundreds of other people going on to create lists of what was scripture and what wasn’t. Oh, and then the divine protection went away in time for them to produce the so called “Wicked Bible” with the infamous typo, “Thou shall commit adultery”.
It would be a shame if, somehow, your faction wasn’t the correct list either, wouldn’t it?
Moving on…
So, in the pre-flood world, ships made out of wooden planks didn’t contract and spread with the passing waves? Amazing! What other fundamental properties of physics were entirely different in this magic world? Since wave-theory is non-operational, can I assume there was no sound as well? Or, maybe water in the boat just magically crawled up the side and went away? Or the water knew better than to go into the boat to begin with, just like all the animals knew not to die and the smallpox viruses knew not to really make people sick for a few centuries while the population recovered.
We can produce cars at a prodigious rate not just because we have knowledge, but because we have infrastructure. I can go down to an iron works and, if I have the money, order several hundred large units of iron in whatever shape I want. No problem. Noah couldn’t. There was no infrastructure to produce the steel that he needed. He would have had to build a massive factory to produce large iron sheets like that! But first, he would have had to work for years in a mine to get enough iron ore to use in the factory! And he would have had to invent all the mining equipment! You can’t just go from instructions to product, you have to have the materials available, and processing isn’t easy.
Also, isn’t it strange that he somehow had the knowledge to work in such a useful metal as iron… and then decided not to pass that knowledge on, so people were stuck with bronze for another few centuries? How stupid was he?
You might want to reread your own source. I quote the last sentence of your article from NOAA: “In other words, the ocean today probably has a balanced salt input and output (and so the ocean is no longer getting saltier).” Funny, your article does not agree with you.
I’m not sure how much attention I need to pay to Robert “Not a scientist” Ballard, from National “Not a science magazine, but we keep trying and bungling (see Archeoraptor)” Geographic as quoted in the Huffington “We hate science and love quack medicine!” Post… but he doesn’t agree with you either. Do you read these before posting them at all? He’s talking about a local flood in that region, as part of a general raising of the sea level, none of which amounts to a global flood. He’s talking about a hypothetical real event the flood myth was based on, not an actual global flood.
Any chance you’ll be responding to all the issues you’re ignoring? I’m still waiting to hear how Noah kept all those animals alive.
And, no, you’re still dead wrong about marine life being able to survive the flood. Look at what happens in local flooding events, massive amounts of dead sea-live that takes years or decades to recover, and only can because stuff in the surrounding area doesn’t die. You’re talking about a global disaster, there is no “elsewhere” for stuff to repopulate from! It’s end-of-existence for ocean life as we know it.
Chris,
I spoke to a friend of mine who is a theologian at USF and he gave me this answer which addresses some of the issues you raised.
“Jesus spoke of the Arch using a parable, so we can assume that he did not necessarily mean the story to be taken literally.
Jesus speaks of the Ark of Noah because at that time it was the only means of salvation – if you were not on the Ark, you perished in the Great Flood.
He uses the Ark as the archetype (foreshadowing) of the Church Herself. This is why the Church is known as the Barque (Boat) of St. Peter. In other words, if you are not “in the boat” when the End comes, you will perish just like those did in the Great Flood.
He also speaks of the speed with which His return shall come, catching everyone off-guard like it did at the time of the Flood.
I’m not trying to change your beliefs, but it seems to me quite a plausible argument for the text to be merely allegoricalâ€
Chris – Even if “gopher wood” (the one tree, apparently, to have been pushed to extinction in the imaginary Flood – had a tensile strength greater than steel, the idea of building a Genesis-spec Ark today would be inviting a disaster.
Let’s say that Ken Ham’s guesswork as to the length of a cubit is correct, so the proposed project would be about 500 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 50 feet tall. According to the story, this structure has only one door and one window – find us a Florida building code which would allow that.
Moreover, the damn thing would have to be (Gen. 6:14) coated with pitch inside and out. Not having petroleum products (as those were yet to be formed by all the decaying carcasses from Yahveh’s tough love), Noah’s pitch would have come from pine tree (or similar conifer) sap. See the problem yet?
The crew which applies the interior coating to this big, barely-ventilated box will need to breathe from scuba tanks, as will any visitors for many years after construction. “No smoking” rules would need to be enforced with rigid fanaticism, for hundreds of yards in all directions, and power tools (ever see sparks flitting around inside the windings of an electric drill?) would be forbidden in the same radius.
Any code enforcement officers who allowed this baby to get past the blueprint stage would have to be more corrupt than Rick Scott, Jennifer Carroll, the entire Tallahassee legislature and the Miami-Dade Commission put together.
Jonathan
I’m not sure how your friend or anyone could come away from Matthew 24:37 as being just a mere analogy. In context, the flood is spoken of as a real historical event to describe a similar future event, that being the end of the age. If a person doesn’t want to believe there was such a flood that’s one thing. But to suggest the Bible doesn’t refer to the event as real will take a lot of imagination and word twisting. Read Matthew 24 for yourself. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%2024&version=NIV
There are specific questions asked and detailed answers given as to when the end of the age will be. Jesus gives warnings and speaks of future wars, earthquakes, famines, lawlessness, false prophets, false Christs, conditions getting so bad that if they were allowed to continue, all mankind would die. Specific signs are given such as the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place spoken of by Daniel the prophet. This is a significant end time prophecy which has not happened yet, the final seven year period for the Jews before Christ physically returns.
The question was, “When will the end of the age be?” Part of the answer is that no man knows the hour or the day not even the angels in heaven, but when you see these things happening you can know it is near, right at the door. As it was in the days of Noah; people were going about their lives as if nothing was happening or going to happen. They were eating, drinking, getting married, planing for the future. The wicked world that was had no concern for God or what Noah was preaching. According to II Peter 2:5, Noah was a preacher of righteousness. The ark could be seen as salvation for Noah and his family but in context that isn’t mentioned. The similar condition of a future corrupt world is spoken of as a literal parallel just before God’s future judgment .
Noah is described as a real person. His fathers name was Lamech who was the eighth generation of Seth: Genesis 5. An ABC news poll said 60 % of Americans believe Noah’s flood and the ark is a real historical recorded event.
Pierce
I think you and Michael have done a good job explaining why Noah’s ark wouldn’t float. So there can only be two conclusions. The first is there was no flood, no ark, perhaps no Noah, and the Bible records nothing but foolishness. Or there was a flood and the Biblical account can be trusted as an accurate historical document. In which case, Noah had material and abilities we are not aware of and apparently he was smarter than anyone here.
The material is irrelevant, Chris. If the ark was made from planks AT ALL, then it would take on water and sink. Period, end of discussion. How do you make aboat from wood without making it out of planks or some other similarly separate units? Was the ark carved from a single large piece of wood?
And how about finding me a large zoo run by eight people, Chris? Any progress on that?
But I love how you equate “not inerrant” with “nothing but foolishness”. What a preposterous leap of illogic. Something has to be perfect to be worth anything? I don’t know anyone who is perfect, but I know people worth the world to me.
‘preposterous leap of illogic’
If the Bible is filled with errors, then what is it.
Are There Any Errors in the Bible ?
http://www.4truth.net/fourtruthpbbible.aspx?pageid=8589952771
Guys, You are wasting your time. Chris is a mindless Godbot who religiously infected brain is stuck back in the 15th century. He thinks that lying for Jesus will give him a short cut to heaven, where he can spend eternity kissing Gods ass, (kind of like a celestial North Korea.) No argument or sense of reason will infiltrate his impenetrable shield of anthropocentricity. Chris is a perfect example of what blind religious faith will do for you. He is a science denier, a biblical literalist and dumber than a sack of rocks. He regurgitates so much crap from Creationist/religionist material (not able to think for himself one second) that you would think he was suffering from verbal diarrhea. Oh yes Chris, almost forgot about the big weekend for you and and that nasty sacrificial blood cult you belong to. Enjoy the vicarious redemption and all the nasty rituals you seem to find so compelling
I know I’m probably wasting my time, but you never know. A friend of mine used to be HIGHLY fundamentalist, until he went on the Internet in the early days to school a bunch of abortion believers in how wrong they were. Smacking into their rebuttals (How could they possibly have arguments with his absolute rightness!?!?) shocked him and sent him into Chris like protestations and denials… but it also forced him to think, and he eventually grew out of it.
So, I challenge the fundamentalists when I can, and don’t let the fact that most of them won’t change their minds deter me.
Of course the Bible has no errors. That’s why Judas dies two mutually contradictory deaths and Noah takes 2, er 7 of everything on the ark. No errors! No contradictions! Look, with some self-delusion, we can patch over the holes! Judas hung himself and THEN cracked his head on a rock!
ivorygirl
They’ll lock you up if you get caught with that stuff.
Chris, Really? Strange how the greatest percentage of people in jail are Christians. They also posses the highest divorce rate and the highest child abuse rate. America rates higher in crime per capita than any Western Nation, with mostly secular nations like Denmark and Sweden the lowest. How would you figure that? Percentages say you’re much more likely to end up in jail than I am pal.
Ivorygirl, you’re probably right about that. There are fewer atheist in jail. The reason could be atheist just commit suicide instead.
Sorry, but suicide rates are higher among Christians as well. Really, reality doesn’t seem to agree with you on much, Chris.
Chris, Atheists (as Michael pointed out) have the lowest rate of suicide out of any groups. With you belonging to your death cult I’m surprised that you didn’t know that, or are you just playing dumb as usual.
Sorry, wishfull thinking on your part
http://www.adherents.com/misc/religion_suicide.html
http://www.skepticink.com/dangeroustalk/2012/10/11/atheism-has-a-suicide-problem
http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18968
“Judas dies two mutually contradictory deaths and Noah takes 2, er 7 of everything on the ark.”
You know Michael, you should really check this stuff out, But using atheist propaganda sites to acquire food for the faith won’t produce anything close to the truth most of the time. Remember, these folks think nothing made everything and they have monkeys as cousins.
See, Chris, you don’t get it. I HAVE CHECKED THEM OUT. And I have been debating creationists since the late 80’s. In that time I have seen dozens of attempts to explain these contradictions, and none of them work. None of them make an ounce of sense.
YOU are the one who gets all your information from one side, and then chooses to project your failings on us.
Now, do you have some answers or just vague declarations that I should run around and do more research without bothering you with facts?
Chris slurred,
“Remember, these folks think nothing made everything and they have monkeys as cousinsâ€
Congratulations Chris, that’s the first intelligent statement you’ve made in years. So now answer Michaels’s questions?
Michael
With you vast experience of fighting for the faith you should have quite a quiver of arrows. I may have a few questions along the way, Where does it say in the bible Judas cracked his head on a rock? Why are you having difficulty with Noah’s two pairs and seven pairs?
Ivorygirl
Glad to hear I’m catching on. But I’m still trying to understand the mutant mind. I was wondering, do you believe that your belief there is no creator, have any bearing on whether or not there is a creator.
Ooops, misremembered that one. To clarify for everyone:
Matthew has Judas, repentant and guilty, returning the 30 pieces of silver to the priests and then hanging himself. The priests use the money to buy a field to use as a grave site and bury him.
Acts has Judas, using the 30 pieces of silver to buy a field, and then he falls down and his guts explode all over everything so that from then on everyone calls the field the field of blood! Ooo, scary! This is supposed to be in accordance with prophecy here, but nobody seems to know what prophecy it is supposedly in accord with.
So, the two verses do not agree on who bought the field, what the field was bought for, or how Judas actually died. They don’t really even agree on what Judas was feeling. Matthew has a repentant Judas, killing himself out of guilt; Acts has holy prophetic vengeance killing him. (And, honestly, if there was a prophecy running around about how the guy who betrays Jesus would die and have his guts explode out over everything horribly… would you decide, “Hey, that sounds like the job for me! I hope I get to spend my silver before I explode!”)
Of course, if we count the Apocrypha, there are two more quite different deaths of Judas to talk about! Maybe he got hit by a chariot! Or maybe he was stoned by the other apostles!
but, of course, Chris’ particular collection of “inerrantly chosen scripture”, different from all the other selections of inerrantly chosen scripture, doesn’t include those, so we can safely ignore them. HIS chooser got it absolutely right and all the others got it wrong, so there.
Still waiting for a large zoo run by only 8 people.
Missed a part that I wanted to cover.
The contradiction between those passages has been bothering literalists for well over a millennium. Even C. S. Lewis, as staunchly as he defended the Bible, admitted that the two accounts could not rationally be brought into accord with each other.
But, of course, some people aren’t limited to rationality. Hence we have the popular argument that Judas gave the money to the priests to buy a field in his name (because he was too lazy to do it himself, or something) so now he has a field and he’s out plowing it or something when he’s overcome with guilt and decides to hang himself. But as he’s hanging himself, the rope snaps and he falls so his guts explode all over everything. ICKY!
But… how much sense does this make? Let me tell you, if I found two newspaper accounts that covered the synthesis event described above, but only reported the half-stories found in the Matthew and Acts accounts in covering them, I’d conclude that both reporters are unreliable idiots. That’s even assuming you think the story makes sense on it’s own. And what does it do with the different moral lessons of the two different tales? Is the story about guilt and repentance, or divine justice from a deity so petty he mutilates a corpse?
But hey, why limit ourselves to covering the Acts and Matthew versions of the tale?
Judas was wandering the world in guilt and despair, and growing fatter all the time. Eventually he gave the money back to the priests (by mail!) and they bought a field in his name (because he couldn’t fit through the doorway of the title office). Then he went to the field, and hung himself, but he did it in the middle of the road, so a chariot crashed into him, causing his guts to explode all over the place. Then the apostles who had been hounding him all this time found him and stoned his corpse. The end.
There, all four accounts of Judas’ death merged into one completely rational story! I’m a genius!
Still trying to figure out how coral survives the global flood.
I must have missed it. Where does it say in the bible Judas cracked his head on a rock?
Chris,
You said†I was wondering, do you believe that your belief there is no creator, have any bearing on whether or not there is a creator.
My answer is No; my personal beliefs have no bearing on anything being true or false. I search for evidence. If you can give me convincing evidence for your particular God, I could change my belief; however that would not make him-her-it true or false.
Michael
Not having much luck finding a zoo ran by eight people. See if you can find a lifeboat piloted by eight people.
Yes, you missed it. Go back and read the two Judas posts. Hint: It’s in the very first sentence. Your reading comprehension seems to be remarkably lacking.
And what in the world is the point of the lifeboat question?
Michael
“Your reading comprehension seems to be remarkably lacking.”
I guess you’re right, I can’t find anthing about Judas hitting his head on a rock anywhere in the KJV, NLT, NIV, or ESV. This information only apears in your comments. You’re just going to write it out for me. I know you wouldn’t just make this stuff up, so with your superior intelect could you explain how hitting your head on a rock could make your bowles gush out. Thanks
“And what in the world is the point of the lifeboat question?”
As to comprehension, we were talking about a lifeboat, not a zoo.
Do you comprehend the statement of mine, “Ooops, I misremembered that one”, followed by me explaining, in detail, what the passages did, in fact, cover?
Really, how dense are you? I’ll clarify.
I goofed, bungled, flubbed up, blew it, laid an egg, stumbled, bumbled, screwed up and blundered.
And then I admitted I had made a mistake and corrected it in further discourse. This is a tactic most creationists could learn from. Don’t worry, I don’t hold the copyright on it or anything. Feel free to use it any time.
Then you can point out how many lifeboats have several million different species to feed.
Michael
Ooops accepted. Now accept mine. I didn’t assonate your Ooops with the rock.
It’s quite apparent Judas didn’t personally buy the potters field, he was dead at the time of purchase. But inadvertently it was his money and his actions which did cause the property to be acquired for himself and others. A few years back a relation died and left my kids a little cash. One of the kids bought a house with the money. And if you were to ask where the house came from today, they would gratefully say their aunt bought it. Wile at face value there is contradiction here, the writers intended meaning is not detailed. There are two authors here with different perspectives not nessarrly different stories.
Judas died one time from either hanging or falling. There is no detail as to the hight nor the thing he was hanging from, the material in the rope, or the exact cause of death. More than likely he died from hanging, was not cut down. and hung long enough for decomposition gasses to cause internal pressure. The hanging rope broke, rotted, or fell apart , he fell to the ground and popped. Our local EMS has some sickening stories just trying to move swollen corpses without an explosion. It’s doubtful he was high enough to fall and cause his guts to gush out. Both statements, “he hung himself” and “he fell headlong and his bowels gushed out” can be true.
“Then you can point out how many lifeboats have several million different species to feed.”
Where do you get millions of species from? Noah took pairs, male and female of each kind that was requested. For instance he didn’t take a pair of humans with red hair, a pair with blond hair, a pair with brunet hair, a pair with black, or a pair with white hair for the purpose of preservation. All of those genetic characteristics were already present in those who boarded. The same was true with all animals. Science has show we all come from one mother ‘Mitochondrial Eve’. So human speciation has been going on from one person from the beginning. The number of actual animals on the ark could have been very very small by comparison.
They COULD both be true, but, again, it makes the storytellers unreliable. If Judas hung himself, that should be the important part of the story. If someone says, “Oh, frank fell down the stairs” and doesn’t mention that he got pushed down, then that person is not reliable as a reporter.
You can FORCE the stories to work together, but not without making at least one of the authors seem woefully lacking in the reliability department. And you’re the one arguing that the Bible is super-ultra-reliable, inspired by god and inerrant. If it can’t get better editorial control than this, “inspired by god” doesn’t seem to mean much. How many other passages might have completely different meanings than what their text says because of unreliable narrators? You just can’t have it both ways.
I get millions of species from the fact that there are millions of species. Most creationists seem to think that new species can’t evolve, despite the fact that:
A) We’ve seen it happen
and
B) After decades of pretending it couldn’t happen, most major creationist organizations now admit that it does, and are now pretending that they predicted it the whole time.
But there are millions of species. There are something like 6 million species of insect alone!
And you, like most people, are misunderstanding Mitochondrial Eve. EVERY variation on every gene had to first appear in a single individual. You have a half-dozen-ish mutations in you, just like every human. Blonde hair? Someone had that gene first. That person would be the “blonde-hair-eve/adam” and all people with blonde hair (not from a bottle) are descended from them. (I’m simplifying by assuming that blonde hair results from a single allele. This is not the case, it’s a set of alleles that contribute to hair color, but each of those also has an “eve/adam”.) This does NOT mean that the entire human race consisted of one person at that point.
Consider for a moment a simplified example. There is a village in the Metaphor Mountains that has 200 people in it. One of these people has a mutation that results in them having green hair. He proves rather popular, and the next generation has quite a few green-haired members. As does the next generation. As does the next. 150 generations later, everyone in the town has green hair and is descended from that one person. They are also descended from other people who were in the town 150 generations ago, of course! But, that first person is “green-hair Adam”. This doesn’t make him the first of a new species. It doesn’t really make him special in any way, other than that one unique gene he contributed. Maybe 50 generations post-green-hair, someone has a mutation that gives them orange fingernails that also proves popular. 150 generations after that (200 generations after green hair), everyone in town is descended from both Green-Haired Adam and Orange-Nailed Eve, despite the fact that they lived centuries apart!
Mitochondrial eve is just the person from which all human mitochondria are derived. She probably wasn’t human herself, but one of our pre-human ancestors, living in a large population of her conspecifics.
But speciation has NOTHING to do with any of this. Really, learn some basics here. You think humans having multiple hair-colors is somehow the same as animals splitting into multiple-species? Wow. Do yourself a favor and spend some time on Wikipedia perusing the biology topics before you post things like this. Really, that’s just staggeringly unaware.
Just to clarify, for most species, changing appearance is something that happens AFTER speciation. Speciation is hard, appearance change is easy.
See, after speciation has occurred, matings between the population of the new species with the population of the old are a waste of time (again, simplifying a bit). The classic example of this is the grey treefrog here in the US. There are two species that cannot be told apart physically, but a speciation event has occurred so members of the one species cannot interbreed with members of the other. This means that matings are wastes of energy. So, how to make sure that you find a mate that’s actually compatible?
Once speciation has occurred, anything that makes your species identifiable to itself is a huge advantage. In the treefrogs, we’re seeing the new population change it’s mating call so that it sounds different from that of the parent species. We are watching this happen in real-time. Other species, especially species that depend more on sight than treefrogs, will adapt new colorations so that everyone can tell who is who.
In short, the changing hair color isn’t speciation, it’s something that is likely to happen afterward.
Michael
“They COULD both be true, but, again, it makes the storytellers unreliable.” Perhaps, but here again your purpose is to secure validation for your own belief, not to understand or to find continuity in the scripture. So for you its all foolishness. 1 Cor 1:18
I think your explanation of species is pretty much on target and thats what I was insinuating hair color was not.
So the issue is how far back in common ancestry do we go before we hit a point of speciation. Not all situations fit your definition. Take Darwin’s finches, I believe there are 13 species which may choose to not breed, but the are compatible. So is it one or thirteen? Another area is dogs, all dogs can interbreed, if not naturally they can artificially. So all dogs can be the descendants of one pair of dogs. Humans are the same along with most every thing eles. The idea that Mitochondrial Eve wasn’t human is pure humanist speculation, not science. Once again the fact is variation within the species is common. Most if not all existing dog breeds could have arisen from a single pair.
“I get millions of species from the fact that there are millions of species. Most creationists seem to think that new species can’t evolve, despite the fact that:”
I don’t know of any creationist who questions variation or adaptation within a species. But your comment is in contradiction with the progression of evolutions theory. Just because you have millions of species doesn’t mean you’ve always had millions of species.
Jesus Christ Chris, It’s already been explained to you ad nausea why the story of Noah’s Ark cannot be true, yet your god infested brain refuses to even consider the evidence. Evidence that has changed the minds of actual Christian geologists. You do not care about the truth Chris, or perhaps it’s more accurate to say, you do not want anything to be true if it conflicts with the literal interpretation of that Bronze Age book you read. You clearly demonstrated your unwillingness to even honestly consider that you may be wrong. This tale you hug so tightly to has evolved over time. Just like all tales do. Just like all of life does. Reality disagrees with that tale. While modern science, history, geology, biology, and physics have failed to convince you otherwise, some idiot rolling around on the floor speaking in “tongues” is all the evidence you need to “prove” Christianity. You are willing to spend your life looking for little loopholes in any of the scientifically established theories, but you find nothing wrong with believing in crap recorded by Bronze Age tribesmen sitting in their tents and just guessing. You feel insulted and “dehumanized” when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt and a rib. You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours.
I really don’t understand why Michael would waste his time with you.
Ivorygirl
It amazes me that you’re able to compile so much misinformation, in such a short space.
Yes, I do have a problem with the idea nothing can do anything. It is remarkable that absolutely nothing can produce something, let alone a complex functioning single celled organism, forget the monkeys. If science is testable, observable and repeatable, then we’re not talking about science. I’ve been trying for quite sometime to get a straight answer how anyone can suck this up. So far only the same old bogus questionable assumptions used as evidence have been given as answers for your belief. Anyone who questions the prospect of nothing doing anything and comes away satisfied with your answers has got to be dumber than rock or demonically deceived. Thats my take so far.