Freethought & Rationalism Archive

emotional · 07-08-2003, 09:18 AM

Mod Note: This thread has been split off from this one.
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Lamoureux's page is interesting. He recognises the ancient science in the Bible (flat earth, waters above the firmament) and calls it an "incidental vessel", but then he proceeds to say that the "faith message" of the Bible (eg humans fallen and sinful) is correct. Why should one assume it is so? If the Bible is wrong about visible things (science), why should it be right about invisible things (theology)? I have much more respect toward the YECs.

excreationist: the date of creation at 3916 BCE (from your website) is of interest. It is closer to the Jewish calculation than Ussher is. Ussher's date is 4004 BCE, the Jewish date is 3760 BCE. More dates here.

pz · 07-08-2003, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by emotional
Lamoureux's page is interesting. He recognises the ancient science in the Bible (flat earth, waters above the firmament) and calls it an "incidental vessel", but then he proceeds to say that the "faith message" of the Bible (eg humans fallen and sinful) is correct. Why should one assume it is so? If the Bible is wrong about visible things (science), why should it be right about invisible things (theology)?

I agree. It's one thing that many creationists and I are in complete agreement on.

Quote:

I have much more respect toward the YECs.

I don't. It's better to be half right than to be all wrong.

excreationist · 07-08-2003, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by emotional
excreationist: the date of creation at 3916 BCE (from your website) is of interest. It is closer to the Jewish calculation than Ussher is. Ussher's date is 4004 BCE, the Jewish date is 3760 BCE. More dates here.

According to my site, the final date should be 4208 BC though... (I accidently subtracted 292 years from it... I'll fix it if I can get through using ftp)
My estimate involved a generous average of 40 years per generation and I chose the longer of Jesus's two genealogies. (The shorter one would then have an even higher average age per generation - e.g. 50+ years) Answers in Genesis used some archaeology or something to get a more in depth estimation.

NonHomogenized · 07-08-2003, 08:36 PM

Ah, but you forget that people at that time lived much longer than people today, and Adam was 900 years old at the time of Original Sin

Gotta love watching them throwing around this shit.

excreationist · 07-09-2003, 04:09 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by NonHomogenized
Ah, but you forget that people at that time lived much longer than people today, and Adam was 900 years old at the time of Original Sin

Gotta love watching them throwing around this shit.

According to the chart I made a while ago, Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old... (which is about 130 years after Adam first sinned) though Adam lived to be 930 years old.
After Noah's son, Shem, the men are usually about 30 when they father the next one in line. That implies that the average age at fatherhood remained at about 30 years until Jesus was born. BTW, the ages people lived decreased (from about 900) after the flood, to 175 with Abraham, and 120 with Moses. (Deut 34:7)
The creationist explanation usually is that after the flood, the water canopy was no more, so lots of radiation got through. This caused people's DNA to accumulate mutations (which are bad, of course) and made them have shorter life spans.
I think a more likely explanation is that it is easier to exaggerate about events if they happened a long time ago... so in ancient times, it would make sense to say that an alledgedly recently living person, Moses, only lived 120 years, while earlier people lived to 900+ years of age.
The people I'm saying might have had an average age of 40 at fatherhood were between Abraham and Jesus. For the people before Abraham I used their exact ages at fatherhood....

emotional · 07-09-2003, 05:35 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by KC
I remember him saying something similar to that in an interview once, but for the life of me I can't find it.

It's from this interview:

Quote:

Was there ever a time when you believed in God?

As a child I did. I had a normal Anglican upbringing and, yes, I believed what I was told.

What kind of a god was he?

Pretty much Anglican: creator of the world, looks after it, knows what is going on in everybody's mind. Occasionally intervenes in the world; makes you survive death.

And then, at 16, you began to question this?

I suppose, by then, of all the classical arguments for the existence of God, only the argument from design seemed to me to carry any weight, and I finally toppled that in my mind when I learned about evolution.

---------

Just for a light relief:

Celsus · 07-09-2003, 05:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by excreationist
According to the chart I made a while ago, Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old... (which is about 130 years after Adam first sinned) though Adam lived to be 930 years old.
After Noah's son, Shem, the men are usually about 30 when they father the next one in line. That implies that the average age at fatherhood remained at about 30 years until Jesus was born. BTW, the ages people lived decreased (from about 900) after the flood, to 175 with Abraham, and 120 with Moses. (Deut 34:7)
The creationist explanation usually is that after the flood, the water canopy was no more, so lots of radiation got through. This caused people's DNA to accumulate mutations (which are bad, of course) and made them have shorter life spans.
I think a more likely explanation is that it is easier to exaggerate about events if they happened a long time ago... so in ancient times, it would make sense to say that an alledgedly recently living person, Moses, only lived 120 years, while earlier people lived to 900+ years of age.
The people I'm saying might have had an average age of 40 at fatherhood were between Abraham and Jesus. For the people before Abraham I used their exact ages at fatherhood....

Or to really get their knickers in a twist, let them in on the fact that Noah must have been a contemporary of Abraham. What? Whole civilisations emerging within the lifetime of the entire world's patriarch and they didn't even visit him at Christmas?

Joel

edit: Oh I see it's implicit in your tables. Very nice by the way.

excreationist · 07-09-2003, 06:27 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Celsus
....Noah must have been a contemporary of Abraham....

Cool. (Assuming the Greek Septuagint is wrong and the Hebrew version is right)

Warcraft3 · 07-09-2003, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by emotional
[B]Lamoureux's page is interesting. He recognises the ancient science in the Bible (flat earth, waters above the firmament) and calls it an "incidental vessel", but then he proceeds to say that the "faith message" of the Bible (eg humans fallen and sinful) is correct. Why should one assume it is so? If the Bible is wrong about visible things (science), why should it be right about invisible things (theology)? I have much more respect toward the YECs.

Well I may not agree with Lamoureux's whole "incidental vessel" viewpoint, but the framework view does have some scriptural merit in my mind.

I used to be a YEC myself and started doubting it at a somewhat young age. Ironically, it wasnt the science which first caused me to doubt the position (I did not know enough or have enough interest in science at the time to critically evaluate the scientific claims)........it was scripture. I saw things within the text which seemed to go against the 24-hour interpretation, and so began doubting it and eventually rejected it as an unsupported position.

Russ

excreationist · 07-09-2003, 08:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by steadele
......it was scripture. I saw things within the text which seemed to go against the 24-hour interpretation, and so began doubting it and eventually rejected it as an unsupported position.....

What things?
What about in Genesis 1 when it talks about evenings and mornings...? It seems to emphasizing that it is talking about literal days. If the author intended people to think that non-literal days were involved, why did he do that?

Also, see
Exodus 20:11 - "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy."
Exodus 31:17 - "It will be a sign between me and the Israelites forever, for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day he abstained from work and rested."

It doesn't say "according to the creation poem..." it talks in a literal sense - that it is a historical fact that God created the universe in six days. If they weren't literal days it could have used a different word (not plain "yom"?)... it could have said "God made the universe in six long ages and rested on the seventh, so people can work on six days and rest on the seventh".

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07-08-2003, 09:18 AM	#1
emotional Banned Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Boxing ring of HaShem, Jesus and Allah Posts: 1,945	Mod Note: This thread has been split off from this one. ==== Lamoureux's page is interesting. He recognises the ancient science in the Bible (flat earth, waters above the firmament) and calls it an "incidental vessel", but then he proceeds to say that the "faith message" of the Bible (eg humans fallen and sinful) is correct. Why should one assume it is so? If the Bible is wrong about visible things (science), why should it be right about invisible things (theology)? I have much more respect toward the YECs. excreationist: the date of creation at 3916 BCE (from your website) is of interest. It is closer to the Jewish calculation than Ussher is. Ussher's date is 4004 BCE, the Jewish date is 3760 BCE. More dates here.

07-08-2003, 08:36 PM	#4
NonHomogenized Veteran Member Join Date: May 2003 Location: no longer at IIDB Posts: 1,644	Ah, but you forget that people at that time lived much longer than people today, and Adam was 900 years old at the time of Original Sin Gotta love watching them throwing around this shit.

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