Ed

I know they are magnificent, everything God makes is. Maybe they both lived at higher elevations than trilobites. And probably when a swimming trilobite sensed danger he dove to the bottom like many modern marine arthropods.

Quote:

More to the point, many trilobites were bottom-dwellers (some even eyeless burrowers, eg Cryptolithus), but many were open-ocean swimmers, eg Opipeuter. How did they all, whether free-swimming or burrowing in mud, all end up in the same strata (ie none later than the upper Permian)? The bottom-dwellers should always be found in 'earlier' strata, shouldn’t they Ed? Since they weren't adapted to swimming, how did they get higher than many free-swimming ones?

See above.

[b] "The selection pressures that caused the sorting process remain uncertain."

Ed

[quote]Originally posted by lpetrich:
<strong>
Ed:
... to me it is rather obvious the differences and I think it would be to the professor. What evidence is there that there are two versions and what contradictions?

Quote:

lp: Noah's Flood Disassembled Basically, the first 5 books of the Bible are most likely a composite of 4 sets of traditions, Yahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomistic, and Priestly, as distinguished by a variety of stylistic features, like the name they use for God, what God is like (the Yahwist parts are grossly anthropomorphic), the geographical setting, what preoccupations (the Priestly parts have lots of rituals, lists, and genealogies), and so forth. One example of this "Documentary Hypothesis" or "JEDP" decomposition is the two creation stories in Genesis. Genesis 1 (the six days) is the Priestly story and Genesis 2 (Adam and Eve) is the Yahwist story, gross anthropomorphism and all.

Yes, I know the Documentary Hypothesis, I took a secular religion class. There is absolutely no hard evidence for this theory and there are serious internal problems with the theory. The different uses of the names of God can be just as easily be explained by the fact that when the text deals with God and his relationship with individuals his name Yahweh is used and when it deals with God and his dealings with the world at large the name Elohim is used. And this is the case with Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 is the overview of creation while Genesis 2 is a telescoping in on the most important event of creation, ie the creation of Man.

Quote:

lp: As to Noah's Flood, it is an interweaving of a Yahwist and a Priestly version. For example: Yahwist: Seven pairs of each clean animal, one pair of each unclean animal Priestly: One pair of all the animals (no discussion of why they didn't leave pigs behind and solve that problem once and for all)

As I stated before one is the general plan while the other is when he gives Noah the specifics. No contradiction there.

Quote:

lp: Yahwist: Rain for 40 days and nights Priestly: The windows of heaven open and the fountains of the deep erupt; the flood takes 150 days to grow

It is obvious from reading Gen. 7:24-8:3 that the 150 days was how long the floodwaters stayed at their highest level. And that the 40 days is how long it rained. No contradiction there.

Quote:

Ed: No it has nothing to do with that in my opinion because the linguistic styles are so obviously different. With the biblical account being a much more realistic style and not so fantastical. lp: Ed, why do you consider the Gilgamesh flood story to be fantastical? Please be specific; point to features of the text, and compare corresponding parts of the Noah's Flood story.

It talks about visible gods running scared like dogs when the flood comes. The ark is an unstable 180-foot cube which would have rolled over and over in a major flood. The biblical ark is much more seaworthy. The flood only lasts 7 days! A worldwide flood lasting 7 days, you cant get much more fantastical than that. Also, the flood is caused by an irrationally angry god, for no good reason. Those are the major fantastical parts that I can rememeber but I think they are enough.

Quote:

lp: I've read it, and it closely parallels the two Noah's Flood stories.

While there are some similarities, see above about the fantastical parts.

Quote:

Ed: What I stated above is actually what the scriptures themselves teach and what the great theistic scientists of the past believed, ie Newton, Galileo, Capernicus, Pasteur, etc. lp: I wonder if Galileo, Copernicus, and Pasteur make Ed want to convert to Catholicism or if Newton makes Ed want to convert to Anglicanism/Episcopalianism.

Although I admire the orthodox versions of those denominations, I think I will stick with orthodox Presbyterianism.

Quote:

Ed: The essential teachings regarding salvation are obvious as well as most of the moral teachings. lp: Christian Salvation is an effort to compare the teachings of different Christian sects on salvation, and there are lots and lots of differences. Even the Bible is not a unified front -- salvation by faith alone or salvation by faith and works?

No, the scriptures plainly teach that salvation is by faith alone but the evidence of that faith is works. The Catholics just combine them into one process while Protestants see them as two, which I consider to be the more biblical position but it does not mean they are not christians.

Quote:

lp: As to moral teachings, there are some rather grotesque contradictions. The early parts of the Bible approvingly describe genocidal massacres, with the only criticism ever offered is that one of them did not go far enough.

Genocide is the killing of groups of people because of WHO they are, God ordered the destruction of tribes because of the evil things they had done and were going to do.

[b] Christ was referring to relationships between individual persons. In the OT wars God was acting as Judge of the Universe meteing out punishment on wrongdoers. Christ also taught that judgement would fall on evildoers from those in the proper positions ie judges, governments, and eventually God, so there is no contradiction.

Oolon Colluphid

Mr Ed the Talking Creationist posted thus:

So why the "slow-footed and slow witted" comment? Are Rickettsia prowazekii and Pediculus humanus also magnificently made by god?

Tubeworms are annelids; annelid fossils are known from as far back as the Ediacaran fauna (eg Dickinsonia). That's Precambrian. Dickinsonia bears a close resemblance to the modern annelid Spinther, which lives on and eats sponges. So annelids were from both higher and lower elevations? Oddly though, there are no Ediacaran trilobites: they don't turn up until the lower Cambrian.

Angiosperms are mainly terrestrial, but seagrasses such as eelgrass (Zostera marina) are adapted to seawater. Seagrasses often form lush underwater meadows, and are among the richest and most productive of all biotic communities. According to Thorson 1971 (Life in the Sea), beds of turtlegrass (Thalassia testudinum) in the tropical Atlantic may contain 30,000 individual animals per square metre. Yet none now contain trilobites; the last trilobites are from the Permian. And to repeat, there is no sign whatever of any angiosperms till the late Jurassic, let alone any seagrasses in the same strata as trilobites. If they had existed together, seagrass meadows would have been trilobite magnets. But there's an 85 million year gap. They should be together, but are not. Why did no trilobite get washed up (or down) into the same level as some angiosperms?

Haha! Funny how the earliest shrimp-like crustaceans (Eocarida) don't appear till the mid-Devonian (c375mya), and things like lobsters and crabs (Eucarida) don't turn up till the Triassic (no earlier than 245mya), yet trilobites start in the lower Cambrian (c500mya and finish in the Permian), isn't it? How come no eucaridan managed to dive to the same bottom as the trilobites? Every crab missed the same bottom as the pelagic (free-swimming) Ordovician trilobite Opipeuter by at least 200 million years! They must be more slow-footed and slow-witted than trilobites!

So you respond to a clear example of evolution with a 'don't know'. Ed, that's really all you've got, isn't it? "Don't know, but I don't want it to be evolution."

Now, please respond to the other questions.

TTFN, Oolon

lpetrich

I'm not sure what Ed means by "hard evidence" here, but there is no more hard evidence for the existence of Moses than there is for the DH.

And what internal problems are there?

A pointless name shift.

However, they contradict each other on important details.

Again, contradictory. A general plan would be "a few" and not "one".

I don't see how that is much worse than the Biblical version; consider that in it, the Biblical God decides to send a flood because he regrets having created humanity. That's not much different from Ea's motive. And toward the end of the story, God relishes the smell of Noah's burnt offerings.

Including the veneration of saints? And what may be interpreted as idolatry?

Very ingenious. The plain sense of the text is that faith and works are different.

Entire populations? Including little babies? Are entire populations to be punished for the supposed sins of some of them? Saying that that is not genocide is a hairsplitting distinction. Also, the Nazis considered the Jews worth exterminating because of the evil things that Jews supposedly do. And consider the likes of Deut 7:1-2:

"When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you are entering to possess it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and stronger than you, and when the LORD your God delivers them before you and you defeat them, then you shall utterly destroy them. ..."

If that is not a command of genocide, then what is?

I really must say that I find these defenses of Biblical genocide worse than Nazi apologetics.

Very ingenious. However, that was not made explicit.

MrDarwin

What Ed is implicitly admitting, but is trying very hard not to come right out and say, is that the writers of the Bible frequently did not mean what they said, and frequently did not say what they meant. Which again begs the question: why couldn't God have used evolution as his tool of creation, even if the Bible doesn't explicitly come out and say so?

Oolon Colluphid

Ed, I'm giving you a break. Literally. I'm off on hols for a week as of tomorrow (Sat), so won't be able to reply to you till next weekend. Thus there's plenty of time for you to address my dozen or so pending questions...

Cheers, Oolon

Duvenoy

Whew! I can't believe I read the whole thing! It sure took me long enough.

Ed, I hate to say it, and I say it only in the spirit of friendship: they're moppin' the floor with ya, bro!

As has been mentioned before, numerous times before, starting statments off with, "Maybe", "Might-have", "Possibly" and so forth turn the statment into mere speculation. Now, speculation certainly has a place in science. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a discovery that didn't have, "I wonder...." at it's beginning. But it can never be used effectivley to debunk another's argument. It also makes the one who speculates look like his own argument has little substance.

I don't think that you realize the gift you've just recieved. Here, in this long and sometimes tedious series of posts you have been given a good chunk of the Theory of Evolution, researched, referenced, and all but wrapped for Christmas. If I had had instruction this good back when I was a kid, I might have made something of myself. If you refuse to at least consider it, well hell, I'm happy to have it, so all those words and references will not go to waste.

Thanks, folks!

I've just read about a fossil claimed to date back to something like 1,200,000,000 years!!! It's not just any old fossil but a series of worm casts. The implication is that a relitivly complex, multi-celluar organism was thriving WAY earlier than thought. This has yet to be confirmed.

So, let the games begin! Everybody's gonna want a piece of this one and there's no doubt that it'll be scrutinized like a cute candy-striper at the VA Hospital. What is truly marvelous about all this is that the people who will work the hardest to debunk the age of the fossil are the ones that want most for it to be genuine.

Does that sound like a contradiction? It is not. The fossil is important only for the information it contains and the evolutionary predictions it supports. Misinformation is the bane of science.

So, let us speculate (Yikes! The "S" word!). If the fossil is genuine, it seens unlikely that this is the only complex species of the time. Not only that, but all of the then existing species need not be 'worms'. Furthermore, what of the huge gap between the currently oldest known, complex species and this possibly, truly ancient worm? What organisms might have existed then and under what conditions?

Stay tuned, folks. This should be a good one!

Ok, how 'bout the Global Flood? There ain't no such animal, never has been!

Look, if there EVER had been such an event, it would show up in the Geological Column like a rat turd in the sugar. Indeed, I'd love for such evidence to turn up. Those sediments would be incredable! Can you imagine the diversity of remains that would be present?

Alas, thus far those sediments are lacking.

Ed, I'd like you to do me a small favor, if you would. Would you simply look up the photos from the Hubble Telescope? A Gooogle search will turn them up easily. Look at the incredable grandure of the Universe! Ask yourself, remembering that Hubble has only seen a minute fragment of the whole: Could this be the work of a mere supreme being; one that seems to be fixated upon the follies of a single species on a small planet of a minor solar system in a less than up-town galaxy?

Then ask yourself: How could all this exist without a supreme being? But when you ask this last, consider how comparitvly small the deity is.

Wishing luck,

d

GunnerJ

Great! Now you can start work on <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=50&t=000005&p=" target="_blank">this thread!</a>

Duvenoy

Aw c'mon Rim! Cut me some slack! I'm an old man and my eyeballs ain't what they used to be.

I've glanced at it and will go into it a little later. Looks like another, good read. Thanks!

d

Ed

Because he seems to be claiming to have all the answers, a major part of my point is that I don't and neither does he.

Quote:

dod: Ed, I'm not a regular poster on this board but you've gone too far now. I'm getting bored to shit reading your "maybe the flood happened X million years ago" shit. Commit yourself or be damned.

How can I commit to something that I don't know?

[b] I already stated I am not a geologist so I dont know the geological evidence but there is documentary evidence ie Genesis.