Ed

I have a hunch if you took a poll, the number of people who have become christians by reading the bible far surpasses the number who have become "freethinkers", whatever they are.

lpetrich

And Ed, I have a hunch that it's the other way around -- that more people become atheists and agnostics and nontheists and freethinkers by reading the Bible than become Xians.

It certainly happened to me -- I found the story of Jesus Christ cursing a certain fig tree extremely revolting and the Book of Revelation to seem like someone's drug trip.

Duvenoy

I myself, never had much of a religious indoctrination, for which I'm eternaly grateful. Reading the Bible has not changed my mind. Quite the contrary, I found it hard to believe that such, well, philosophic confusion and hocus-pocus could be accepted as fact by such a huge number of people. Well, that's what faith is all about, I suppose. To believe the beyond belief.

Lots of folks believe in psychics and UFOs and stigmata and dowsing and bunyips and Nessie and the End is Near and THEN Yer Gonna Get Yer Comeuppance!, as well.

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9941/index.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/9941/index.html</a>

They all too often back up their beliefs with their billfolds, to the enrichment of charlitans.

Go figger.

doov

Ed

Yes, in college and graduate school.

Quote:

(Duvenoy on a 1.2-billion-year-old putative worm trace fossil...] Ed: Yes, if it is genuine it takes a big chunk of the magical entity of Time from the evolutionist and makes it even less likely that such a complex organism could evolve in such a short amount of time. lp: So Ed is now endorsing old-earthism?

Actually it applies to either view.

Quote:

duv: Ok, how 'bout the Global Flood? There ain't no such animal, never has been! Ed: How do you know? Are you omniscient? Or are you a time traveler? lp: Because there is no positive evidence for anything like Noah's Flood ever having occurred. The biggest floods there is any evidence of on Earth are some Pleistocene glacial-dam-break floods in the Columbia River Valley and the Altai Mountains. And imagine some "Noah" trying to survive that sort of flood -- he'd have to be a super whitewater rafter who can navigate currents of ~60 mph, avoiding running into some big boulders and going over some of the waterfalls along the way.

Not if the ark was built on a large plain.

Quote:

lp: And there is evidence of similar sorts of floods on Mars that had happened in its first few billion years -- the numerous "river valleys" have similar stream shapes.

Actually there are some astrophysicists that think that Mars even had a planetwide flood. I read an article in the newspaper about this not too long ago, ie about a year ago.

Quote:

duv: 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? Ed: Not if it only lasted a year out of 4.6 billion. lp: Ed jumps to the little-sediment view. Anyone willing to bet when he'll start advocating the big-sediment view again?

I generally favor the little sediment view. But I could be wrong.

Quote:

lp: This view also implies that Noah's Flood had produced essentially NONE of the "fossil graveyards" that Ed has cited as evidence of Noah's Flood.

No, there are a few at the right period in geological history.

Quote:

(someone else on some of the marvels of interstellar space...) Ed: Actually my screensaver is Hubble photos. They are incredibly beautiful. My response is the oppposite of yours, ie How could such things come into existence by impersonal chance processes? lp: I wonder what Ed believes -- that God Almighty goes around and sculpts interstellar nebulae?

Yes, indirectly.

Quote:

lp: This reminds me of a view that Carl Sagan had noted had once been held -- that God has to come around and say to morning-glory flowers "Hey, flower, open!" in order to make them open.

I doubt it, that is too much of an anthropomorphism.


[b] But recognition of the beauty of objects is not necessary for survival so it is unlikely that it would selected for by natural selection. Fairies and elves can be eliminated using logic as the cause of the universe.

lpetrich

And what did you get out of those writings?

Then dig it up. Check to see whether you had misremembered its contents, because I've never seen any such claim elsewhere.

Meaning that the rest of them were NOT produced by Noah's Flood.

"Beauty" is a subjective experience. It could be how we experience attraction to certain objects.

And how does one do that with pure logic?

Duvenoy

Deleted because I really don't want to get back into this. It had to do with logic, reason, and the supernatural.

doov

[ September 11, 2002: Message edited by: Duvenoy ]</p>

Ed

Some of them could be see earlier post.

Quote:

(Noah's Flood being rough waters...) Ed: Actually after some initial roughness the waters probably would not be much rougher than modern oceans. lp: But the water has to be *always* smooth enough to allow the Ark to stay intact.

How do you know? It may have been quite tough.

Quote:

Ed: ... I lean toward the old earth flood theory, so it would have occurred aproximately 2 million years ago and therefore not as many species as you mention would have been on the ark. lp: 2 million years ago is not much by geological standards; there would still have been about as many species as today, and very similar higher-level diversity. And humanity's ancestors back then were the likes of Australopithecus africanus and Homo habilis, which had almost-simian brain sizes though they were well-adapted to walking upright.

Actually there is some evidence that humans were living at least 1.8 mya, ie homo "erectus".

[b] That is true at present but they may have been functional in the past. Mutations may have occured to reduce their functionality.

lpetrich

However, raging floods are very bad for boats.

Which had originally been Pithecanthropus erectus.

Duplicated genes can become pseudogenes. But much junk DNA is not even pseudogenes.

Ed

Of course, the last section of the Torah was not written by Moses, probably Joshua or one of his scribes.


[b] While there is no direct evidence that he wrote it, there is indirect evidence. If you are interested I will enumerate it.

Ed

I was in the Carribean for a short time several years ago. I think the Ark could have handled it, wood was probably stronger in the distant past before the high level of pollutants in the soil and water of today.