Jack the Bodiless

Ed:
This issue has already been addressed by several people here. Again you're carrying on the pattern that became so obvious on the other thread: you're not keeping up. When it's perfectly obvious that humans were created in 4000 BC or thererabouts (according to the Bible) and the Flood was in 2300 BC or thereabouts (according to the Bible), it is POINTLESS to pretend otherwise! Your "descendant of" ploy will not solve your problem.

Now why don't you actually READ EVERY POST ON THIS THREAD, and don't bother to post again until you have understood the issues.

[ February 25, 2002: Message edited by: Jack the Bodiless ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Very true. Care to say which of these are human, and which are apes?




Oolon

lpetrich

However, the context suggests that the most natural meaning would be just plain son; these are genealogies, and to be precise, they'd have to indicate if some generations got skipped.

Or maybe it didn't happen. Big subterranean caverns necessary would collapse under their own weight, since nearly all rocks are more dense than water.

What positive evidence is there for the Tower of Babel incident outside of the Bible?

Natural languages form a tree-like pattern; this pattern is associated with the movements of various peoples and the establishment of empires. Although much vocabulary can be borrowed, and often is, there is a "core" of a language that is much more seldom borrowed -- the grammar and the basic vocabulary. And when one compares these core features, one can construct family trees. And to date, several big language families have been identified, some with reconstructed vocabulary that places their origin well before the Bible's more reliable history.

The best-studied of the big families, Indo-European, has a reconstructed ancestral vocabulary that includes words for dog, horse, cow, bull, sheep, and pig, but not cat or donkey; the lack of a word for donkey suggests some distance from the Middle East. In technology, they had words for wheel and axle and for conveying by vehicle; however, they had only one word for metal, suggesting a lack of familiarity. Words for "iron" in the recorded IE languages are multiple inventions and borrowings, suggesting a later acquaintance. And the Bible features lots of metal stuff, including iron stuff.

For more, see <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/61/" target="_blank">The American Heritage Dictionary</a>, which contains not only a lot of ancestral-Indo-European info, but also ancestral-Semitic info.

But why is Pasteur good and Darwin bad?

Ed, what would you consider evidence, short of doing an intensive survey in a time machine?

Whatever counts as "great meaning and purpose".

GunnerJ

Holy christ on a bike, Ed is such a jackass! Can you people see what I mean now?

Look at him so feebly grasp at straws!

Holy... Godda... wow. I... no. I can't even find an adequete reply to this idiocy. Is this type of crackhead a person you people like debating with?

Amazing how he can make such bolb, unevidenced, bullshit assertions right below a direct refutation of it!

Ed seems to have forgotten that he claimed that god is dead, and therefore is incapable of creating life, by Ed's own "reasoning."

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000066" target="_blank">"God is dead" says Ed</a>

Ed

quote:

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Ed: Actually there is evidence that we all descended from one woman, ie mitochondrial Eve. Again as I stated before, the scriptures do not tell us WHEN humans were created. lp: I'd be surprised if Ed knows what a mitochondrion is or how genetic drift works. Because all existing ones having a single ancestor at some point in time is a result of genetic drift. There have been estimates of what is the minimum population necessary to allow Human Leukocyte Antigens to retain their diversity (these indicate to white blood cells that a cell is not to be attacked, and are selected for diversity as a result of parasites adapting to resemble one or another of these). Geneticist Francesco Ayala and his colleagues estimate that the HLA complex diverged over the last 30-60 million years, and that humanity's ancestral populations have seldom gone below about 1000 individuals.

If human genes were more diverse in ancient times the population could be less than that. And there is evidence that they were. Africans have more diverse genes than any other human group and are considered the oldest human group.

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lp: Also, Ed's remarks about the Bible are evasive. Why isn't he honest enough to acknowledge errors in it? I'm willing to acknowledge that "virgin birth" is a misnomer for some legendary divine impregnations, and that some of Lord Raglan's hero criteria are probably incorrect or misleadingly stated. But I don't see anything similar from Ed about his favorite book.

I have acknowledged that there are minor copying errors but no significant errors.

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Rimstalker's rather profane rejection of Flood Geology deleted) Ed: No need for the crudities and obscenities. That is a sign of a shallow thinker. Some scientists have proposed that there was a vapor canopy over the earth prior to the flood or that the water came from under the earth's crust. lp: Ed is very prissy, isn't he? A vapor canopy would have pushed the Earth's atmospheric pressure way up, and where in the Earth's crust would that water have come from?

Not prissy, just trying to keep things at a higher level. From chambers between the Crust and the Mohorovicic Discontinuity. These chambers would collapse after the water was released thru the ridges that are found on the ocean floors.

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Ed: I have looked at it and most of them can be reasonably explained. lp: Ed ought to go over to Evolution/Creation and write a point-by-point rebuttal to the Flood-Geology criticisms.

I am afraid I dont have time.

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Ed: Modern linguistics says that there was originally one language, so does the scriptures. The fact of God causing the diversification of language cannot be discovered by studying language alone. lp: Ed has not told us where "modern linguistics" is supposed to be claiming that. Yes, I want a chapter-and-verse quote.

Noam Chomsky claimed it, but I will have to look up the exact source.

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Ed: Well he has yet to do it. lp: Like how am I supposed to have failed?

None of my arguments for the existence of God have been refuted.

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Ed: Your analogy fails. You need to provide an example where something is produced from something else that does not contain what is sufficient to produce that effect. ... lp: And how does one determine that?

Research.

[b] [quote]
(Rim: Ed seems to believe in theistic evolution, day-age creationism, and young-earth creationism simultaneously)
Ed:
Because my post is primarily about the existence of the Christian God and the rationality of believing in him, not HOW he created the universe and life. Such a discussion belongs on another thread and I dont consider it of extreme importance.

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lp: However, Ed's jumping from position to position is very evasive and self-contradictory. One wonders if he'd claim that Jesus Christ was a myth if that would help him win an argument.

How God created the universe is not essential to the Christian faith but of course the existence of Christ IS essential. So a christian cannot deny that and still remain a christian.

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Ed: The evidence is the ignoring and rebelling against his moral law throughout all of human history. lp: If I was an omnipotent being and that was something I cared about, then I'd ensure that all of humanity was physically incapable of misbehavior. From this perspective, what is so great about free will if it leads to sin? Also, consider what Heaven is supposed to be like -- does anyone ever commit sins in Heaven? If Heaven is a sin-free realm, then that demonstrates that such a realm is feasible.

Such a realm is of course feasible but God considers moral free choice extremely important for the present world.

Quote:

(Rimstalker on the mass murder of animals in Noah's Flood...) Ed: No, he probably allowed it to show the extreme seriousness of man's rebellion against God's moral law so that man would never consider doing it again. lp: Stupid. I'd make everybody physically capable of misbehaving.

Huh? They are physically capable of misbehaving. I dont understand.

Answerer

Hello everyone, I suggested that lets stop bullying ED for he is already quite a poor thing for he deluded himself too much that our words would not make any difference to him.

[ February 25, 2002: Message edited by: Answerer ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

I fear you are correct, Answerer. He has signally ignored everything I have said to him so far. I have tried being nice; I have tried provocative language; still nothing. I don't see any point in continuing any one-sided conversations... and given the level of his responses to others, I'd strongly advise everyone to IGNORE THE TROLL.

Oolon

lpetrich

I don't think that Ed really knows what genetic diversity is. If there are N different versions of some gene, then there must be a population of at least N/2 people to carry all those versions. And very likely more, to make statistical drop-outs unlikely. Which makes it very unlikely that our species ever passed through a 2-individual bottleneck; actual estimates are more like 1000 people.

That's a very strong statement.

Ed shows total ignorance of geology. Those ridges are where new oceanic crust is formed. And those big water chambers he talks about would have been very unstable.

Ed can cry us all a big river about how he has lots of time to post here but not much time to analyze Flood-Geology criticisms. Could it be that he does not want to see counterevidence?

Where? And for what reason? I'd be surprised if Ed has any conception of linguistic evolution.

1. What would Ed consider a refutation?
2. Where are Ed's demonstrations of the nonexistence of all other possible deities?

Ed tries to have it both ways: treat the Bible as literal history and deny that he does that.

Then is Heaven worth going to? This sort of thing seems like whipping oneself and then moaning and groaning about how painful it was to be whipped.

Sorry, I goofed. I meant physically INCAPABLE of misbehaving. I'm a computer programmer, and therefore a kind of creator. Though I am far from being either omnipotent or omniscient, I do have some ability to work out designs.

Automaton

Within that context, it almost always refers to the actual, physical parent(s).
Your lies have no place here. The water would be under enormous pressure. Pressure = heat. And the displacement of atmospheric gasses caused by the water surging upwards at such incredible speeds would have created a lot, lot more. (You know what happens when a meteor comes down? Well the same would have happened as the water surged up.) It would also have created a tremendous shockwave, so Noah and pals would have had the pleasure of being blown to pieces and flash fried at the same time.
How do you know Jesus was ressurrected, were you there?
You forgot to add, "...in meat broth." And I'm almost certain deliberately. Your degree of self-deception is so great, I'd bet you'd believe 2+2=5 if your cult told you so.
Look in the mirror, then read a damn book.
If your God said that rape and murder were moral, would it not still be barbarous, immoral, or evil? Or would you follow His Command without batting an eyelid?
Let me get this straight. God was demonstrating what Man's sin could do by He himself killing innocent animals? Wow, your God must be as skilled in logical reasoning as you are.

GunnerJ

Well, folks, it's never a good idea to wrestle pigs (not only do you get dirty, but the pig enjoys it), but there's no argument against flogging trolls!

<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> Why am I not surprised? Oh, wait, because doing so would require Ed to think, and he's quite allergic to that.

Correction:

"I have not ackowledged that my arguments for the existence of God have been refuted."

Yes. Quite so. In order to believe the crap Ed spews, you'd have to be (at a) higher (level) than most.