Freethought & Rationalism Archive

nogods4me · 07-24-2008, 10:20 AM

methinks bong has had a few too many of the eponymous devices...

Blackclaw · 07-24-2008, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bong_0000007

King Clone is a desert bush that is estimated to be around 11,700 years old.
Condition of weather aor climate makes growth gap.Ring slow formation or fast formation.

Such gaps can be accounted for and the ring date is cross checked by carbon dating. If the two different dating methods resulted in differing dates, then we'd know there was a problem with the methodology used, but this has not been the case.

http://www.evolution-creationism.us/...dest_tree.html

Quote:

Are you implying that a global flood would have wiped out coral reefs? A violent storm system could certainly damage a coral reef system, but being covered by water isn't really a problem for them so long as sunlight can still reach them.
YEs,turbulent sea,covered by mud flow.

There are all types of follow-up questions for that... idea, but for the sake of arguement let's say, ok, God killed all the coral during the great flood. After the flood did he then go around creating new coral? Were all land plants wiped out during the flood? Did God have to recreate a large portion of the plant kingdom? If God was going to go on a creating spree afterwards, why did he pester Noah to bring all those animals along? Why not just spring those back into existance too?

It all sounds like a lot of unneccesary work. Why didn't God just snap his fingers and Presto! all sinners get a fatal disease and keel over. Then God wouldn't have had to destroy so much of his own creation. The whole story of the flood is like saying that God created this wonderful work of art, but then let some human make a mistake on it and then, instead of just erasing the mistake, he rips the whole painting in half.

The entire tale of the flood is very much in the tradition of ancient storytelling. It's an interesting tale to tell around the fire in the days before television. And just like many works of fiction, there are giant plot holes and unanswered questions.

Yellum Notnef · 07-24-2008, 11:20 AM

In the time before the internet these people used to roam the streets rambling endlessly to any unfortunate passerby. Often they would ask for spare change.

Keith&Co. · 07-24-2008, 11:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Blackclaw

Such gaps can be accounted for and the ring date is cross checked by carbon dating. If the two different dating methods resulted in differing dates, then we'd know there was a problem with the methodology used, but this has not been the case.

More to the point, when science agrees with bong's view, it's accurate science. Science that disagrees is bad science.

Reason · 07-24-2008, 02:58 PM

Isn't there a sticky somewhere that refutes this infinitely-repeated bullshit? If not, there should be.

Amaleq13 · 07-24-2008, 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bong_0000007

• The current population of earth (5.5 billion souls) could easily be generated from eight
People (survivors of the Flood) in less than 4000 years.

That is false according to population genetics but, given the currently available genetic evidence for the human species, the notion is demonstrably false. Such a "bottleneck" of genetic material would have been painfully obvious but it simply does not exist.

Word of warning: This thread does not appear to belong in BC&H and may be moved soon to a more appropriate venue.

juergen · 07-25-2008, 12:46 AM

Actually, the oldest tree (I could find in Googles) is described here,

My findings in google/national geographic are probably not entirely conclusive.

Quote:

3) How could most of these races who worship other Gods even know of the story of the global flood? Unless at one time they all worship the same God as explained in the Bible.

They worshipped the same God? Really? As explained in what part of the Bible?

sharrock · 07-25-2008, 01:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bong_0000007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oldest Things Alive Today are around 4200 years old
(http://www.creationevidence.net/evbiology.shtml)
• The oldest living coral reef is less than 4200 years old.
• The oldest living tree in the world is about 4300 years old.
• The current population of earth (5.5 billion souls) could easily be generated from eight
People (survivors of the Flood) in less than 4000 years. http://ldolphin.org/popul.html
http://www.answersingenesis.org/crea.../i3/people.asp

http://www.sharkbayvisit.com/pages/the-stromatolites/

rizdek · 07-25-2008, 02:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sharrock

http://www.sharkbayvisit.com/pages/the-stromatolites/

fascinating...so much more intriguing than, "god done it ~6k years ago and then drowned it all 2k years later, and here we are."

Malachi151 · 07-25-2008, 02:32 AM

Yeah, compare the Bible to ancient Greek views about the world:

Quote:

"The universe is infinite because it has not been produced by a creator. The causes of what now exists had no beginning."

"There is an infinite number of worlds of different sizes: some are larger than ours, some have no sun or moon, others have suns or moons that are bigger than ours. Some have many suns and moons. Worlds are spaced at differing distances from each other; in some parts of the universe there are more worlds, in other parts fewer. In some areas they are growing, in other parts, decreasing. They are destroyed by collision with one another. There are some worlds with no living creatures, plants, or moisture."

"The material cause of all things that exist is the coming together of atoms and void. Atoms are too small to be perceived by the senses. They are eternal and have many different shapes, and they can cluster together to create things that are perceivable. Differences in shape, arrangement, and position of atoms produce different things. By aggregation they provide bulky objects that we can perceive with our sight and other senses."

"By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color: but in reality atoms and void."
- Democritus 6th century BCE

Quote:

[T]he world was produced by the working of nature, without there having been any need for a process of manufacture, and that what your school declares to be capable of accomplishment only by means of divine intelligence is a thing so easy that nature will produce, and is producing, and has produced worlds without end. It is because you do not see how nature can accomplish this without the help of some kind of mind that, like the tragic poets, in your inability to bring the plot to a smooth conclusion, you have recourse to a god. Yet you would certainly feel no need for his agency if you had before your eyes the expanse of region, unmeasured and on every side unbounded, upon which the mind may fasten and concentrate itself, and where it may wander far and wide without seeing any farthermost limit upon which to be able to rest. Now in this immensity of length and breadth and height there floats an infinite quantity of innumerable atoms which, in spite of the intervening void, nevertheless join together, and through one seizing upon one, and another upon another, form themselves into connected wholes, by which means are produced those forms and outlines of the material world which your school is of opinion cannot be produced without bellows and anvils. You have therefore placed our necks beneath the yoke of a perpetual tyrant, of whom we are to go in fear by day and night, for who would not fear a god who foresaw everything, considered everything, noted everything, and looked upon himself as concerned in everything,—a busy and prying god? From this has come, in the first place, your idea of preordained necessity, which you call ε μαρμ�*νη, meaning by the term that every event that occurs had its origin in eternal truth and the chain of causation—(though what is to be thought of a philosophy that holds the ignorant old crone’s belief that everything happens by destiny?)—and secondly your art of μαντικ , or divinatio, as it is called in Latin, which, if we were willing to listen to you, would imbue us with such superstition that we should have to pay regard to soothsayers, augurs, diviners, prophets, and interpreters of dreams. From these terrors we have been released by Epicurus, and claimed for freedom; we do not fear beings of whom we understand that they neither create trouble for themselves, nor seek it for others, and we worship, in piety and holiness, a sublime and exalted nature.
- The Nature of the Gods; Cicero, 45 BCE (citing views held from the 3rd century BCE)

Quote:

For lapsing aeons change the nature of
The whole wide world, and all things needs must take
One status after other, nor aught persists
Forever like itself. All things depart;
Nature she changeth all, compelleth all
To transformation.
...
In suchwise, then, the lapsing aeons change
The nature of the whole wide world, and earth
Taketh one status after other. And what
She bore of old, she now can bear no longer,
And what she never bore, she can to-day.

In those days also the telluric world
Strove to beget the monsters that upsprung
With their astounding visages and limbs-
The Man-woman- a thing betwixt the twain,
Yet neither, and from either sex remote-
Some gruesome Boggles orphaned of the feet,
Some widowed of the hands, dumb Horrors too
Without a mouth, or blind Ones of no eye,
Or Bulks all shackled by their legs and arms
Cleaving unto the body fore and aft,
Thuswise, that never could they do or go,
Nor shun disaster, nor take the good they would.
And other prodigies and monsters earth
Was then begetting of this sort- in vain,
Since Nature banned with horror their increase,
And powerless were they to reach unto
The coveted flower of fair maturity,
Or to find aliment, or to intertwine
In works of Venus. For we see there must
Concur in life conditions manifold,
If life is ever by begetting life
To forge the generations one by one:
First, foods must be; and, next, a path whereby
The seeds of impregnation in the frame
May ooze, released from the members all;
Last, the possession of those instruments
Whereby the male with female can unite,
The one with other in mutual ravishments.

And in the ages after monsters died,
Perforce there perished many a stock, unable
By propagation to forge a progeny.
For whatsoever creatures thou beholdest
Breathing the breath of life, the same have been
Even from their earliest age preserved alive
By cunning, or by valour, or at least
By speed of foot or wing. And many a stock
Remaineth yet, because of use to man,
And so committed to man's guardianship.
Valour hath saved alive fierce lion-breeds
And many another terrorizing race,
Cunning the foxes, flight the antlered stags.
Light-sleeping dogs with faithful heart in breast,
However, and every kind begot from seed
Of beasts of draft, as, too, the woolly flocks
And horned cattle, all, my Memmius,
Have been committed to guardianship of men.
For anxiously they fled the savage beasts,
And peace they sought and their abundant foods,
Obtained with never labours of their own,
Which we secure to them as fit rewards
For their good service. But those beasts to whom
Nature has granted naught of these same things-
Beasts quite unfit by own free will to thrive
And vain for any service unto us
In thanks for which we should permit their kind
To feed and be in our protection safe-
Those, of a truth, were wont to be exposed,
Enshackled in the gruesome bonds of doom,
As prey and booty for the rest, until
Nature reduced that stock to utter death.

But Centaurs ne'er have been, nor can there be
Creatures of twofold stock and double frame,
Compact of members alien in kind,
Yet formed with equal function, equal force
In every bodily part- a fact thou mayst,
However dull thy wits, well learn from this:
...
Such hybrid creatures could not have been begot
And limbs of all beasts heterogeneous
Have been together knit; because, indeed,
The divers kinds of grasses and the grains
And the delightsome trees- which even now
Spring up abounding from within the earth-
Can still ne'er be begotten with their stems
Begrafted into one; but each sole thing
Proceeds according to its proper wont
And all conserve their own distinctions based
In Nature's fixed decree.
- On the Nature of Things; Lucretius, 50 BCE (citing views held from the 3rd century BCE)

Quote:

CHAP. XIX.--EPICURUS; ADOPT'S THE DEMOCRITIC ATOMISM; DENIAL OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE; THE PRINCIPLE OF HIS ETHICAL SYSTEM.

Epicurus, however, advanced an opinion almost contrary to all. He supposed, as originating principles of all things, atoms and vacuity. He considered vacuity as the place that would contain the things that will exist, and atoms the matter out of which all things could be formed; and that from the concourse of atoms both the Deity derived existence, and all the elements, and all things inherent in them, as well as animals and other (creatures); so that nothing was generated or existed, unless it be from atoms. And he affirmed that these atoms were composed of extremely small particles, in which there could not exist either a point or a sign, or any division; wherefore also he called them atoms. ... [H]e says that God has providential care for nothing, and that there is no such thing at all as providence or fate, but that all things are made by chance. And he concluded that the souls of men are dissolved along with their bodies, just as also they were produced along with them, for that they are blood, and that when this has gone forth or been altered, the entire man perishes; and in keeping with this tenet, (Epicurus maintained) that there are neither trials in Hades, nor tribunals of justice; so that whatsoever any one may commit in this life, that, provided he may escape detection, he is altogether beyond any liability of trial (for it in a future state).
- Refutation of All Heresies; Hippolytus (3rd century CE)

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07-24-2008, 10:20 AM	#21
nogods4me Contributor Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Baltimore, MD USA Posts: 17,432	methinks bong has had a few too many of the eponymous devices...

07-24-2008, 11:20 AM	#23
Yellum Notnef Banned Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Gone Posts: 4,676	In the time before the internet these people used to roam the streets rambling endlessly to any unfortunate passerby. Often they would ask for spare change.

07-24-2008, 02:58 PM	#25
Reason Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Southwest USA Posts: 879	Isn't there a sticky somewhere that refutes this infinitely-repeated bullshit? If not, there should be.

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