Amaleq13

I think you have made it very clear in other threads that the phrase "regardless of what the evidence suggests" should be at the end of this sentence.

As I have pointed out to you before, this is the exact opposite of the approach a true scientist is supposed to take.

You've got it backwards but I think I understand why. You decided on the conclusion before considering the evidence so that must be what everybody else did. I can't speak for everyone but that is certainly not true in my case. I also know a man who is the son of a fundamentalist missionary and has spent his entire adult life studying the earth sciences (he's been a paid consultant for oil companies for example). He was raised to believe the same things you do but, as his understanding of the evidence increased, he felt compelled by intellecual honesty to change his mind about many of his previous assumptions but not his faith in God. His name is George Erich and he wrote a book called My God!. I know him and I can provide the necessary information to contact him directly or order his book if you are willing to challenge your preconceived notions.

Send me a PM if you are willing to honestly challenge some of your beliefs.

Sensei Meela

Not so; you could accept it metaphorically, you could accept it as non-universal, and a half dozen other permutations.

Science doesn't prove much of anything, but it does disprove some things...

I've got a nice mattress and some 'herbal' home-remedies for that...

'So-called evidence?' What, pray tell, gives you the authority to denounce it all so swiftly?

Is not likely what...historical fact?

The Flood of Genesis is a flat-out physical impossibility, period, and "that's that." Without a suspension of the physical laws of nature, there is no way that the Flood occurred exactly as stated in Genesis.

This is practically anti-intellectualism. 'Refuses to consider [the] evidence?' Ha! No, 'scientists' have 'considered' said 'evidence' and consider it to be, being charitable, totally bogus.

Abject fraud.

It's rational, if not logical, to discard 'evidence' that cannot stand to scrutiny. The fact is that so much of that 'evidence' for the Global Flood is unable to do so, hence the current disinterest in academia.

Do you? Really? A world-wide flood, everywhere you go? How did you determine this? How qualified are you to determine this?

Hardly surprising, considering their (collective) biomass and (disproportionately high) representation in the animal kingdom.

Fossil hunting is a neat hobby.

But not all at the same time. Big difference.

The Flood was, at one time, the only explanation available. It has subsequently been ruled out because it cannot explain what is seen and violates any number of physical laws. So you see that it is not dismissed a priori...as you would have us believe...but that it has fallen victim to the success of it's competitors.

Nor is it even a claim any scientist has made, in recent years, if memory serves me. Maybe you ought to post this is Science and Skepticism...?

Erosion is a geologic process that works on exposed sediments. It's no big shocker to see no signs of erosion on fossils that haven't been 'exposed to the elements' for perhaps millions of years...

...but erosion and deformation are observed in many fossils. (Besides, there are far more reliable methods of determining the age of a fossil than by superficial guess-work)

No they aren't!

Sedimentation issues aside, I find it hilarious how you accuse scientists of 'picking and choosing' which evidence to 'believe'...hardy-fucking-har...

'If I really want to find evidence in the Bible to show God is a child-killing liar, it's not too hard to find; on the otherhand...' The point is, you bring a bias to the 'evidence' by going in looking for what you expect to see.

I feel insulted that you call your approach 'objective'.

Quite the contrary; it's almost entirely one sided. The 'scientists' are all engaged in a consipiracy to independantly confirm one another, entirely unawares, to the exclusion of all evidence to the contrary, which they promptly keep under-wraps to avoid blowing the lid off the hole pot...

No. The truth is, objective examination has led millions of rational minded people, secular and religious alike, to the conclusion that a worldwide flood, as literally depicted in Genesis, is preposterous mythology, at best.

I can accept that. Sometimes, it's the most honest answer a "true seeker of truth" can arrive at.

That being said, I will remind you, then, of the provisional and tentative nature of scientific 'knowledge' and 'conclusions;' it is entirely possible, though beyond unlikely, that evidence will surface that will explain BOTH why 'our' theories work AND explain what our theories cannot. Such is the way science works; it's self-correcting.

Bully for you. It's a good thing that the inanimate chemicals don't need you to accept what they do in order to do it...

[...BTW, the 'fortuitously' part is a total anthropic judgement. That bias is a large part of the problem, regarding your incredulity, I'd imagine]

So says you, but I'm sure you know more than them...(course, I and most other biologists are open to the idea that life didn't evolve the way we've hypothesized, but it was probably pretty damned close...)

No; it's the process of learning. One of the joys of being a biologists is knowing that life is not constrained to the experiences we are familiar with; it is our common sense that is illogical, most often.

Whoa, whoa...don't go leaping to conclusions all over the place; this thread was about the impossibility of the Noacian Flood (as told by Genesis), not about the merits of super/naturalistic philosophies re:cosmological origins. You may need to appeal to supernatural explanations to salvage your Flood story, but that's your problem, not mine.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. One may believe in God while adopting a non-literal interpretation of (what are supposedly) 'his' Scriptures. It's a far more sensible position than the retreat into denial you've demonstrated here...

rlogan

Hey, Jim - good to see you over here in BC&H. Now, I am wondering if this is the source of your belief that Jesus confirmed the historicity of the flood:


"36": But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

"37": But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

"38": For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

"39": And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

This is Matthew 24, but you could take Luke 17 too. That's your proof, right? The proof that Jesus backs the flood as real?

In June of 2000 in a campaign speech Al Gore said that electing George Bush would be like killing the Goose that laid the golden egg.

Therefore the story of the goose that laid the golden egg is true.

Marduk

This whole ‘only one righteous man’ type stuff is pretty odd. Consider Lot, Sodom is going to be wasted and the Angels come to get him out and He doesn’t want to go! He likes living in Sodom, his friends are there. If he’s the only righteous guy you’d think he’d want to get otta town, but noooooooo. He wants to save the place. How bad could it be?

Jim Larmore

This is the place in the Bible that I believe is where Jesus confirms the flood really happened , yes.

Doctor X

Save that the Bible--"holy" or not--does not describe an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient diety.

Next. . . .

--J.D.

Sven

And then you would have abandoned logic and common sense since an omnipotent , omnipresent, omniscient God is entirely incompatible with Noah's flood - as I showed above and what you ignored completely. Oh, I see you havent included omnibenevolent in your list. So, do you concede that Noah's flood contradicts omnibenevolence? Is your God not omnibenevolent? This would surprise must other Christians in this world...

Have you even read a single word of what I wrote in my first post?
This thread is not about science - it's about logic and common sense. This is the same logic and common sense which you use to say that abiogenesis and "macroevolution" aren't possible. Why don't you use your logic on the Bible? You'll realize soon that it is the Bible which is totally beyond logic and common sense - as demonstrated in my post. As long as you haven't refuted these points, there's no way to honestly claim that "God did it" is more logical than a natural explanation.

Instead you go on and bring your tiny bunch os "arguments" up again, which almost entirely rest on your subjective interpretation of evidence and which is contradicted by almost all experts in the respective field. If you really think any of your points has merit, you can discuss them over at EvC - but I started this thread because of the logical problems. So far, it seems you haven't even grasped this obvious distinction.

To summarize: My argument here is not about evidence - it's about logic.

Then you're position should be agnostic. If you can not answer question on both sides of the controversy, agnosticism (towards OOL and evolution) is the only logical position. But you cling to your "God did it" instead. This isn't logical. Period.

Jack the Bodiless

Jim:

As Sven has pointed out, your response is more appropriate to the EvC thread than to this BC&H thread. But I'm curious why you would repeat this section:
...after I had already pointed out (in EvC) that it made no sense?

Returning to the topic:

It has already been pointed out how implausible it is that all of the eight righteous people lived together in the same family. If Noah was such a shining example of righteousness that he was able to "convert" his wife, and raise his sons properly, and convert their wives: why did he fail to convert any other person to "goodness"?

...And why did Noah and his family "fall from grace" so soon? Suddenly we have Noah getting drunk and lying naked and comatose in his tent, Ham going in and doing something unspecified which resulted in him and all his future descendants being cursed forever...

...This is how an omnibenevolent God treats the most righteous elite selected from millions (or, at least, many thousands) of people?

If this is "human free will" in action, why is humanity driven so irresistibly to do bad? Are we really "free"? And why is God so quick to punish those who actually ARE innocent of any wrongdoing?

I am unable to comprehend how anyone finds this story edifying. It is such obvious nonsense!

dado

first let me say i am not defending a "literal" reading of the flood story. but i do think it's interesting to transpose the story into a more contemporary, familiar setting.

(1) there are only a few righteous people in iraq. we don't know how many, but however many, there are far more Evil Doers.

(2) no, it doesn't make sense to kill them all, but to make sure we get all the Evil Doers, having a few not-so-Evil Doers eliminated in the process is an acceptable margin of error

(3) compared to one little crazy man, the UN is effectively omnipotent, so why couldn't sanctions and other forms of influence be used to enact change and spare a whole lot of grief?

(4) dead kids fall under the "acceptable margin of error" criteria

(5) getting blown up isn't a nice death, but then, what is? the important thing is, they got dead, problem solved

dado

we don't know that he was. Judaism has debated for millenia - and will continue to debate for millenia - whether Noach was "good" or merely "good enough". not defending the concept of a worldwide flood, just pointing out your statement has an underlying c'ian bias. which is fine for the later books, but for the earlier books i think it is only fair to at least consider what the original custodians thought.

if these stories made obvious sense, we wouldn't be debating them three thousand years later.