Albert Cipriani

Dear Mageth,
You expend many words to come to an inconclusive conclusion:
The “canals” on Mars, our nearest and most similar planetary neighbor, indicates that the arrested development of that dead planet was once covered by water, too.

You argue:
Well, if “initially” is going to be operative word, you should opt for “initially molten.” But, then, why stop there? As stardust from a second-generation star, our planet was “initially stone cold debris.”

Point is, Genesis initiated its description of this “pale blue dot” (to borrow a phrase from Carl Sagan) in our solar system appropriately when its agglomeration phase of formation and comet capture had ceased and its continental formation had begun.

You got a problem with that? Must you find fault in the fairy tale for having accurately begun its description this planet's formation at the 4 billion years ago mark instead of at the 4.6 billion years ago mark when you suspect the oceans had not yet formed?

Point is, Poindexters are impossible to please. – Albert the Traditional Catholic

Mageth

The “canals” on Mars, our nearest and most similar planetary neighbor, indicates that the arrested development of that dead planet was once covered by water, too.

I've never heard it postulated that Mars was covered by water. Some liquid water on the surface, perhaps.

Well, if “initially” is going to be operative word, you should opt for “initially molten.” But, then, why stop there? As stardust from a second-generation star, our planet was “initially stone cold debris.”

Obviously, by initially "dry", I meant it was "dry" before it was "wet."

Point is, Genesis initiated its description of this “pale blue dot” (to borrow a phrase from Carl Sagan) in our solar system appropriately when its agglomeration phase of formation and comet capture had ceased and its continental formation had begun.

You got a problem with that? Must you find fault in the fairy tale for having accurately begun its description this planet's formation at the 4 billion years ago mark instead of at the 4.6 billion years ago mark when you suspect the oceans had not yet formed?

So "In the beginning" doesn't mean "In the beginning", but "somewhere along the line" or something like that?

Yes, I admit that perhaps you can use a hammer, some axle grease, a bit of duct tape, and the liberal redefinition of words to make the Genesis myth more or less fit what we now know about the early universe/solar system. But when you're done, you're left with a greasy, mangled, taped-up mess. Genesis 1-3 is a creation myth, no more valid than any of the other creation myths that have been around for millenia. I'm sure one could take a hammer, grease and tape and make something more or less coherent out of at least some of those, if you wanted to.

And the "Poindexter" bit is getting a bit old. Why don't you just drop that bit?

K

Albert:

Let me get this straight. You seem to agree that the writers of Genesis had no concept of eletromagnetic radiation. I'll assume that you also agree that they had no concept of the other physical processes that we now suspect were at work during the universe's earliest moments. But you're willing to trust their account of how the universe was formed?

And you think Mageth is being dull ?!

Albert Cipriani

Mageth says:
Then your aesthetics and your science is bizarre. But don’t take my word for it. Take the words of the Greek and Chinese creation myths that I snagged at random from here:

Creation According to the Greeks
Creation According to the Chinese

Greek Myth
"Locked within the bowels of their mother Earth, the children [Greek gods] grew up, but the burden caused great pain for Earth. So she created a new metal and fashioned a sickle from it which she gave to her boldest offspring, Cronus.

"The next time Sky came to make love to Earth by stretching out all over her, Cronus, springing up from his hiding place, brandished his sickle and castrated his father. Additional offspring sprang from the spilled blood and organ -- most spectacularly, Aphrodite, from the foam."

Chinese Myth
“In the beginning , the heavens and earth were still one and all was chaos. The universe was like a big black egg, carrying Pan Gu inside itself. After 18 thousand years Pan Gu woke from a long sleep. He felt suffocated, so he took up a broadax and wielded it with all his might to crack open the egg. The light, clear part of it floated up and formed the heavens, the cold, turbid matter stayed below to form earth. Pan Gu stood in the middle, his head touching the sky, his feet planted on the earth. The heavens and the earth began to grow at a rate of ten feet per day, and Pan Gu grew along with them. After another 18 thousand years, the sky was higher, the earth thicker, and Pan Gu stood between them like a pillar 9 million li in height so that they would never join again.

"When Pan Gu died, his breath became the wind and clouds, his voice the rolling thunder. One eye became the sun and on the moon. His body and limbs turned to five big mountains and his blood formed the roaring water. His veins became far-stretching roads and his muscles fertile land. The innumerable stars in the sky came from his hair and beard, and flowers and trees from his skin and the fine hairs on his body…”

Are you being honest with me when you state that the creation myth of Genesis 1-3 is “no more valid” than that which I’ve quoted above? Lying is a sin, and so I don’t wish that upon you. But if you honestly believe what you say you believe, I believe it speaks of a worse state of your soul than bearing false witness. Ergo, I know not what to hope for in your case. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

My Religious Philosophy List

K

Albert:

Are you for real? Have you ever read Genesis? It's absolutely ridiculous - just like the creation myths you quoted above. All three, when treated literally, are laughable. But now if you are allowed a non-literal interpretation of your creation myth, then the other two should certainly merit the same treatment.

Afterall, Pan Gu cracking the egg clearly

Sound familiar?

Albert Cipriani

Dear K,
Can I call you “K?” OK. I wasn’t sure if we were on a first letter basis.

Well, what can be said? K thinks that the Chinese creation myth in which Pan Gu cracks the egg he’s in with a battleaxe is comparable to Genesis 1:4 which states: “And God saw the light that it was good; and he divided the light from the darkness.”

I say that Genesis 1:4 is an amazingly accurate description of the distillation of dark matter and photons from their primordial Big Bang state of pure energy. K thinks that Pan Gu splitting an egg in two is equally as apt a description of that stage in the Big Bang’s cooling.

What can be said? Nothing at all. The best refutation of you, K, is to let you have your say. – Albert the Traditional Catholic

K

Albert Cipriani:

You can call me "K" or you can call me "J", but you doesn't have to call me "KJ" (ouch, I just dated myself).

Since you think Genesis provides such an accurate description of the distillation of dark matter from pure energy, maybe you could shed a little light on how the process works. In fact, maybe you could explain what dark matter is. I know a lot of physicists are dying to find out.

The fact is, dark matter is only called "dark" because it represents mass in the universe that hasn't been accounted for. Isn't it time to admit that you just saw a word from cosmology that was similar to a word in your creation myth and you equated the two? If not, I'd be extremely interested in hearing what dark matter is and how you know that it's dark as opposed to just unaccounted for.

SecularFuture

7thangel,
You believe your bible was inspired by a God, yes? Why? In a modern world that offers no evidence for the supernatural, how can you believe in a book that is without rational proof for its claims?

Why do some feel that quoting from their religious book will sway the mind of a secularist? If there is no evidence for the supernatural, all of the supernatural claims from your bible are without rational merits.

Have you ever considered the possibility that creative writers, long ago, could have easily fabricated your entire bible from scratch? Have you ever considered the possibility that Jesus Christ, Mary, Adam, and Eve could all be fictional characters in a beautifully written story? Think about it. It would not have been that hard for a group of people to do. And - why would someone want to fabricate a religion? - To gain control, to set a standard, and to put more power into a specific church(es). Have you ever considered this? Take a moment to seriously think about it.

In a natural world, why should the supernatural exist? Because some of us want it to?

No. I’ve already looked for God. If you would like to know more about my search, please visit this link: http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=44779 Maybe you can help me.

Amos

I think dark matter is the unexamined life that will return to dust unaccounted for.

Albert Cipriani

Dear K,
You can call me Al or you can call me Albert, just don’t call me names. I’ve more of a claim to being dated by that because that comedian’s name was “Al” and so is mine.

In spite of my suspicion that I should not bother, I will bother to point to the obvious. To my knowledge, no creation myth has conceived of the concepts expressed in the Genesis creation myth. One of those concepts is the idea of dark matter made implicit by Genesis 1:4: “He divided the light from the darkness.”

At the point in creation when God is said to have divided light from darkness, He had not created any planets. So one cannot interpret this division of light from darkness as merely the rotation of a planet causing the appearance of day and night. Rather, it can only be seen as the precipitation of matter out of the energetic soup of the Big Bang.

You can call it matter, or you can call it dark matter, just don’t call it that version of light we no longer see, the stuff that was inflating as the Big Bang.

In other words:
atoms atoms burning bright
in the nuclear furnaces of the night
are by comparison to that first “light” of the Big Bang, dark matter. It’s all relative, man. – Albert the Traditional Catholic